BloggingCoach.com

Starting your own blog is just the first step to marketing your business. You can create a great blog, but that doesn’t mean the right people will find it and start reading it. Sure, you can wait for search engines to index your site – or you can be proactive about seeking out traffic immediately. Here are some suggestions for finding readers for your blogs.

Leave Comments

Leaving quality comments that add to the community discussion on the top blogs within your niche area is one of the quickest ways to generate traffic to your blog. Use Google Blog Search or Technorati to find blogs within your niche area, then subscribe to their blogs. Once you’ve familiarized yourself with how these bloggers write and who generally participates in the blog discussion, join in.

Just a quick note here: don’t spam! And by spam, I mean comments like “I agree with your post. Check out my blog.” Find ways to actually contribute and add value to the discussion. Keep it short – if you prefer to write a lengthier response, you can do so on your blog.

Build Relationships

If you want to build a high traffic blog, seek out the influencers in your niche and build relationships with them. Participating in their blog or forum discussion is the first step. You can also write about their content on your blog and reach out to them by sending them a personal email introduction.

Bloggers prefer personal interaction, so don’t send a generic email that sounds like it could go out to 10,000 others. Rather, talk about the subjects they write about, reference a particular post you liked, or ask about something they might be interested in. Whatever you do, don’t give them a hard sell pitch.

Guest Posting

Many bloggers are in constant need of new content and welcome guest posts from other bloggers. One of the benefits of being a regular commenter on a high traffic blog is that you can network with other bloggers and set up mutually beneficial marketing agreements.

The general rule of thumb is to go where your target audience already is – and interact with them there. As you build rapport and trust, they will eventually follow you to your blog to continue the conversation.