Where do you promote your blog?
August 22nd, 2008 by 
John Dilbeck
You’ve taken the time to research a topic for your new blog and decided there should be enough interest to make it worth the effort.
Then, you created the blog, chose a theme, modified the theme, selected plugins and widgets, and now you are ready to write great articles on all the topics you researched before starting.
Right?
Hopefully, that was your approach.
I think most bloggers throw up a blog and then look for something to write about. I know I did that on some of my first blogs.
I was a lot more focused and took more time to research what I was going to do before I started this blog.
Either way, now you have a blog, you’ve been writing on it for some time, and you want people to find you and read what you have to say.
Ideally, they’ll also post great comments so you and your readers can learn even more about the topic of the article.
So, where do you promote your blog?
There are lots of ways to promote your blog, and I’m sure you know of many that I’ve never used. I hope you’ll share them with us.
Let’s start with some that work well for me.
Create a lens about your blog on Squidoo
My main place to promote my blog is on Squidoo. For instance, I created a lens especially for this blog at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.
Syndicate your RSS feed on your other blogs
I syndicate the RSS newsfeed from this blog on several other Squidoo lenses and some of my other blogs, such as you’ll see in the sidebar of my Marketing With Squidoo blog.
Create a community for your blog on MyBlogLog.com
I also registered this blog on MyBlogLog.com and created a community for it at 21st Century Affiliate Marketing.
There are several benefits of creating a community for your blog there. First, it syndicates your RSS feed as headlines on the page. Second, it makes it easy to increase your business networking as people join your community. Third, they offer widgets so you can see who has visited you lately. This makes it easy to visit their sites and/or make contact with them on other social networking services.
You can see this in action towards the bottom of the left column of this blog. Look at the Recent Visitors widget. If you hover your mouse over the visitor’s face, you should see a fly-out that lists the blogs and sites for which they have created communities on MyBloglog.com. It also makes it easy to join their communities and increase your business networking.
About half-way down every page on this blog, in the right column, you’ll see a section called “New with John Dilbeck.” In that section is a widget provided by MyBlogLog that shows my latest activities on this blog and other sites and blogs I author. It also shows what I’ve been doing on several networking services such as Twitter, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, and others.
It has taken a long time to set all of this up, but now, whenever I do something on one of my blogs, websites, or forums, that action is recorded in the RSS feed and is automatically syndicated on multiple other sites. I get visitors from a wide variety of sites as a result.
You can see another example of this at work on my profile page at the Squidoo Marketing community I created. In the right column of the page (and every other page of the site), you’ll see the Recent Visitors widget for the MyBlogLog community I created for that social networking site. In the center column, you’ll see the wider widget from MyBlogLog that shows my activities on my sites and the social networking services I use regularly.
Syndicate your blog’s RSS feed as widely as you can
Syndicating the RSS feed from your blog on multiple sites is a good way to get your writing noticed by both new readers and the search engines.
Should you tweet your blog on Twitter?
I use a plugin called Twitter Tools to post an announcement about new blog postings to my twitter profile.
At first I was unsure about this and created a Squidoo lens called Should You Tweet Your Blog? to learn what other people think about the idea of automatically tweeting new blog posts. I’d welcome your opinions and feedback either on that lens or by leaving a comment here.
Link to your blog on forums and in comments on other blogs
I’ve talked about my blog on various forums and in comments on others’ blogs.
Be sure to add value when you post to the forums or comment on someone’s blog. As long as you’re adding to the conversation and helping others, the link to your blog will be welcome, or, at least, tolerated.
If you just jump in and write a post or comment about your blog that doesn’t add any value to the discussion, it will probably be deleted. At the very least, you’ll look like a spammer, and I know you don’t want to do that.
One good place to list your blog is in the thread started by Michael Galante on the ConquerYourNiche forum, Share your active blog here. I’ve found several blogs there that I’ll be reading and I’ve subscribed to a couple of their RSS feeds.
Another good place to link to your blog, especially if it is related to Internet marketing, is in the Members, show off your blogs! thread on Lynn Terry’s Self-Starters Weekly Tips forum.
(By the way, I’m one of the moderators of the SMO: Social Marketing & Social Media section of Lynn’s forum, and I invite you to come and share your knowledge and experiences about social networking with us.)
I have links to this blog in my signature file on a number of other forums where I’m active. Each post I make to those forums will link back to this blog.
Make good comments on other blogs
One way you can promote your blog is to make good comments on this one.
WordPress, by default, uses “nofollow” links so the search engines won’t follow links to the site you list when making your comment.
I’ve installed the DoFollow plugin so you’ll get some linklove when you post a good comment here. I also installed CommentLuv, which will try to find the last post you wrote on your blog and will link to it below your comment.
Additionally, SezWho is active on this blog and it will keep track of the comments you make on blogs with SezWho installed. It’s a pretty cool tool and I think we’ll be seeing more blogs using this nice tool as time goes by.
I hope you’ll make use of the rating feature SezWho provides to express your opinion of what I write and the comments others leave. By rating what we say, it will go into the multi-site comment aggregator that SezWho maintains and we can raise (or lower) our reputation based on the quality of our writing.
Now, I welcome substantive comments that are on-topic and I look forward to talking about affiliate marketing with you in any discussions that develop here.
However, I’ll delete your comment if it doesn’t contain anything worthwhile or is off-topic. So, don’t bother leaving a comment that says something like, “you have a good point,” or “that’s great.” I’ll delete ‘em in a heartbeat.
Don’t spam something I write with an off-topic comment full of advertising. Poof! Gone.
But, if you write something about the topic that adds to our understanding of your viewpoint or which offers links to on-topic resources, then I welcome what you have to say.
Do you comment on blogs?
My friend Mitch posted an interesting article called Why Don’t More People Comment On Blogs? on his blog a few days ago.
Do you have any thoughts on that subject?
In Summary
I mainly use Squidoo lenses, Twitter, a community on MyBlogLog, sig files on other forums, and comments on blogs to promote this blog.
How do you promote your blog?
Act on your dream!
JD
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This entry was posted on Friday, August 22nd, 2008 at 6:55 am and is filed under Affiliate Marketing, Blog Directories, Blogging, Business Networking, Forums, Promote Yourself, RSS Syndication, Social Networking, Squidoo Lenses, Twitter. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Fred Peters has a good article on his blog, 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers, and I think you may find most of the listed ideas to be helpful.
I’m going to disagree with his Tip #30.
I think it would be a big mistake to put your RSS feed URL in your email or forum signature.
Never trick your readers.
Link to the most popular article on your blog, if you want to, or the home page of the blog, but not to the RSS feed.
Item #32 links to an article about RSS feed directories that may be useful, but quite a few of the directories in that list are outdated.
You may want to find a newer list, or discover individual sites to which you can submit your RSS feed.
When I want to find something like this, I turn to Sitesell’s free Search It utility.
You can use it for free and don’t have to register for anything.
Search It! comes with many pre-programmed searches that make it much easier for you to find what you’re looking for without having to know the specialized syntax and commands of the various search engines.
For example, if I were going to find sites to which I could submit my RSS feed, I’d go to Search It and then click the Search It link which will open a smaller window with the search utilities.
In step #1, select Straight Up under the Advanced Search section.
In step #2, select Google, with quotes.
If you’re new to Search It, click the link below the steps 1 and 2 boxes to learn more about the particular search combination you’ve chosen.
In this case, put submit RSS feed in the step #3 text box.
There is nothing to do with step #4 for this search.
Click the Search It! button to begin the search. Do not hit the Enter key on your keyboard - it won’t work.
In this case it would have been easier, if you knew exactly what you were doing, to just go to Google.com and enter the search terms in quotes, but for some of the other searches, Search It! makes it much easier for you.
Then, just go through the results and submit to the sites you want. Since you’re looking at the Google search results, you’ll probably get more value out of the sites listed on the first five pages than you will all the others.
Fred is right in saying that submitting your RSS feed to directories and aggregators is a very good thing and it will help get your articles out to a wider audience.
Do you have other ways of promoting your blog?
Act on your dream!
JD
August 22nd, 2008 at 1:53 pm
As noted in my original article, I suggest posting relevant and helpful comments on blogs that have topics related to your niche.
This is another way in which Search It! can be very helpful.
It has a nice customized search for blogs that allow comments.
In step #1, select Blog/RSS search under the CTPM section. (CTPM stands for Content - Traffic - PREsell - Monetization. See the SBI! - CTPM Process page for more information, if you’re interested.)
In step #2, select Google blog search with comments.
Click the link below step #2 to learn more about this search, if you want.
In step #3, enter the topic you want to comment on.
Now, this sounds rather harsh, so don’t comment on all of the blogs you find unless what you have to say will add value to the discussion there. That would be an example of being a good member of the global blogosphere.
Adding a comment that is totally self-serving and/or which is full of ads for what you are promoting would be crass. That’s a good example of being a spammer.
In step #3, enter the topic. Even if you’re not interested in leaving a comment, this is a good way to find blog posts about the topic in which you are interested, and can be a good way to research it.
For instance, we’re talking about promoting your blog, so enter promote blog in the step #3 text box.
Click the Search It! button.
This will open a page with more information about this search function. At the bottom of that page is a link to take you to the search results.
These search results are provided by Google’s Blog Search (still in Beta). One of the great benefits of using this search is found towards the bottom of the page.
In addition to finding the top-ranked blogs that are talking about your topic, you can also get regular notifications from Google in your email, on your Google homepage, or in Google reader.
So, maybe you’re a work at home Mom and you’re wanting to keep up-to-date with birthday party ideas. This is a great way to find other people writing about the subject. You’ll have the opportunity to meet like-minded people, join in conversations, and learn more about your niche.
This applies to just about any niche - I can’t think of any examples that would not work.
Just remember to keep it real.
Yes, it’s a bit of work, but isn’t it worth it to increase your knowledge of your niche, to meet others who are interested in it, and to keep up to date with alerts from Google?
Act on your dream!
JD
August 23rd, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Good post, John, and thanks for the love!
Two things. One, personally I’m not feeling the love for Squidoo, and I can’t figure out why. To me, it seems like it’s basically another blog that I have to give a lot of time to. If I were only blogging as a career then doing something like that might be a good idea, but as I looked around at many of the other blogs, it just seems like, well, a lot of extra work.
Two, something you didn’t mention was pinging one’s own blog. Actually, I do that and I also make sure that at least Technorati has seen that I’ve updated my blogs. It works perfectly for one of my blogs, but for the other, Technorati seems to miss it many times, so I have to ping it directly. That helps a lot.
But the biggest driver of new traffic to my site does seem to be Twitter, though it dropped off drastically in June for some reason. So, I always put a link to my latest blog entries there.
August 24th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Hi Mitch,
I just don’t see Squidoo as a form of blogging. I look at it as a free webpage with lots of features for adding interactivity with little effort.
Once I create a lens, I don’t put much work in updating it unless something changes. I do check new comments, but that’s pretty easy because I get an email when someone leaves one.
By syndicating the RSS feed of this blog, for instance, on a Squidoo lens, I don’t have to do anything there. All the work is here and the lens automatically updates itself.
As you know, WordPress automatically pings when you post, and I have my RSS feed run through another feed on Feedburner.com which also automatically pings.
I’ve not seen that problem with Technorati, but I’m going to take a look right now…
This is the first time I’ve been to Technorati in awhile. I did add this blog to my list of blogs there, a few weeks ago, but didn’t do any other exploring then.
I just noticed that ImJustSharing.com has an authority of 23 on Technorati. That’s outstanding! It’s the first blog I’ve added to my Technorati favorites.
Apparently pinging Technorati is working automatically for this blog, so it looks like I won’t have to do manually, but that’s a very good tip.
I’m starting to get more visitors from Twitter, too, so I’ll continue to tweet my latest posts. I’ve decided to do that automatically, using Alex King’s Twitter Tools plugin.
Thanks for your comments, Mitch. They’re most appreciated.
Act on your dream!
JD
August 24th, 2008 at 10:03 am
My first avenue for blog promotion has always been through my signature which I use on forums and several community blogging sites. I also use blogengage.com, mybloglog.com, blogcatalog.com and spiceypage.com. If I am particularly happy with a post I will hit the blogs that support commentluv so that it will parse that particular post. Naturally I will try to leave a decent comment which I believe will encourage people to come and visit. It is also important to have a captivating title to generate interest.
On occasions I will use twitter, and thanks to you I am looking at creating some Squidoo lenses.
I have noticed that if I spend a little time trying to use some good keywords that I also get a fair bit of traffic from the search engines.
Sires last blog post..Do You Want More People Commenting On Your Blog?
August 24th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Hi Sire, I’m not familiar with blogengage.com. I just added it to my to-do list to learn more about it. Thanks!
Have you been able to start your Squidoo lenses, yet?
Act on your dream!
JD
August 24th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Not yet John, unfortunately my wife has me doing other things, maintenance and stuff around the home, and I sneak in every now and again to see what is happening.
Sires last blog post..Do You Want More People Commenting On Your Blog?