Give Your Blog Some 'Reader-Lovin'- Blog Marketing

Is it even being read? Care to learn some tricks to draw in torrents of eager readers, begging for your next post? Come learn to market your blog!

So many new bloggers get discouraged when weeks (or months) pass, and their blog still hasn't generated the thousands of readers they'd hoped for.

I can empathize- you put in all the hard work and nothing seems to come of it. Well, there's a reason for it- and it has little to do with hard work. The answer lies in the details of your approach- little 'blog marketing tasks'- things to do that not only multiplies your result, but is actually enjoyable as well.

What are these easy and simple things that work like magic?

Let's explore some basic time-tested blog marketing tactics, and see if they are really too much for you.

Put aside the idea of having a blog "all about you." Honestly- it's been done far too much. Unless you happen to be a famous movie star, singer, or whatever Hollywood made of you, don't expect many people to care about your everyday problems, much less read about it. A good start is to narrow your focus to a small slice of a topic area- a specific interest, or a specific hobby.

Join in Forum Discussions

Find and join forums that are relevant to your blog's topic, and have high page rank.

Get active in forums, and don't be afraid to socialize. Become known, and get to know people- make some friends. Remember to set up your profile, like your picture, name, the "about you" section, and most importantly- your signature. As a norm, your signature consists of a quick blurb or phrase and a link to your site (your blog). Don't spam every post you find, saying "Hey look at my site!"- just get involved with conversations. Each post you make leaves a backlink to your blog. When you seem to know what you're talking about, people (and search engines) will follow your backlinks.

Try to find the most popular forums in the niche you are writing about. To find them, just go over to Google and search for your niche keyword plus ‘forum’ and you should get a list. Try to find forums with at least a few thousand active members.

The Pingback Trick

Get Blog owners to come running- and sometimes bringing their friends, too.

Another trick involves trackbacks and pingbacks. Mention other people's blogs, and link to them with trackbacks and pingbacks enabled. What this does is notify the blog owners that they'd been linked to- and now they're going to come and see what you said. Some of their readers will, too... yep! that means even more readers. Put this on turbo: target more popular blogs and do this- that means a LOT more readers.

Comment On Other People's Blogs

It's simply a way to be social (that usually has the benefit of a backlink). They write something that gets you thinking, and you say it with a comment.

Comment on other people’s blogs as much as you can (without spamming). In most cases you can put a link back to your own blog and people do follow these links. It is also good to target blogs that talk about the same subject as you, because then you will get targeted readers who are more likely to continue reading your blog.

Keep Posting Entries

Keep the content fresh for all of your new readers.

The biggest thing to do is to keep posting on your blog. Your readers will constantly want something new to read- not the same stuff that's been there for a month. Fresh new content is crucial to a good steady readership.

These are some basic steps should get you off to a good start, and will help generate more readers. There are also ways to "automate" parts of your blog and blog marketing tasks so you can focus on growing your readership even faster...