Marketing a blog

[legend]

Hey guys,

I am about to launch a blog, and would like to know how I should go about marketing it. What are the things I should do to start a beginning blog and get it "out there?"

thanks

[Trusttec]

Legend,

What kind of blog are you making? Before you launch any blog you should try to have at least 3-5 good posts. I will offer some more suggestions after I learn what kind of blog you plan on making!

[legend]

Its a opinionated/current events blog. Basically I give opinions on events happening in the news whether they be political, or social.

[Trusttec]

All I can really offer is just write quality posts and submit them to digg and hopefully everything goes right you will get lots of traffic and in turn rss readers!

[profitline]

Trusttec leaked out a secret which was to submit on digg, digg is a social media place where stories can be submitted. I have seen many technology and current events post all being on front page of digg and it can drive your hosting memory to a crashing status, normally of 30,000 and above visitor in one day and it will continue for at least 3 days.

What you can do is draft write 10 pillar post on events, try to give a variety in your post and just post them daily. Submit it to digg and find friends on digg and ask to to read your interesting article and if they like it, drop you a vote! The more the merrier!

[legend]

Yeah thanks, I will definitely "digg it" as soon as it's ready!

[Trusttec]

Yeah make sure its a nice post because people usually dont digg just anything and you usually need at least 30 - 45 diggs (most cagegories) before you will get on the front page

[trigatch4]

All I can really offer is just write quality posts and submit them to digg and hopefully everything goes right you will get lots of traffic and in turn rss readers!

In my opinion, that's terrible advice. You're writing great content and you're putting yourself at the mercy of digg? You won't get anywhere on digg unless you either have built in traffic (which you don't) or have a network of people who you can ask to digg your articles, giving them a boost.

I would recommend two things for a beginner trying to get noticed:

YAHOO ANSWERS

Either visit yahoo answers and search for quesions that your post answers and direct them to your posts, or, find a question being asked a lot, answer the question on your blog and link them to the post. You'll get some nice traffic for this if you answer popular questions.

BLOG COMMENTING

People say this works but it's really annoying that they don't give you a specific method that actually works. Because if you just go to random articles and post your link you won't get anywhere.

Goto Technorati and look up the top blogs in the niche your blog is in. Subscribe to the RSS feeds of these blogs. Check the RSS feeds MANY times a day and when appropriate, try to be one of the first commenters with an appropriate, RELEVANT and USEFUL link to your blog. If you're one of the first few commenters and it is a hugely popular blog, you could get some nice traffic. I've worked it where I've gottena few hundred visits a day over about 3-4 days and I still get traffic from the comment.

But remember:
-POPULAR blog with LOTS of traffic
-RELEVANT article linking to USEFUL information
-As one of the FIRST commenters on the article

The second method is better... and actually, it can work wonders for you. But when it comes down to it, if your site and articles suck, the visitors won't stick around anyways. So first and foremost, you need to create good content.

And while I said the digg submission was a terrible idea... I didn't mean don't submit to digg. It's a good idea to submit to digg because it's a link nonetheless and if you're able to push it up to the front you are golden. But RELYING on digg is a very bad idea... especially when it is so hard to hit the front.

A sales person would call that "pitching and praying" as opposed to facilitating a purchase. In the end, you ARE a salesmen... selling your blog... for free... imagine that.

Goodluck and if you want to pick my brain, I'm always glad to help.

[Jean Costa]

Those are some valuable tips there trigatch4! :D

[ebittner]

When I am about to start a new blog the firs thing I do is look for other blogs that are in similar niches and ask the owners if they want to have a link exchange, this will help you both to get direct traffic from them and in the long run it will also bring you a lot of search engine traffic.

[Trusttec]

trigatch4,

You are saying submitting to digg is terrible, get to good articles on the front page of digg with in a week and watch your rss feed climb. If this has never worked for you, I am not sure what you did wrong?

[legend]

Trust have you been front page?

[profitline]

I have not been on the front page before, but the effects is much greater and targeted compared to stumbleupon, that's for sure.

[legend]

Of course, because digg has such a large viewership!

[trigatch4]

Trusttec perhaps you should read my full post... especiall this part:

And while I said the digg submission was a terrible idea... I didn't mean don't submit to digg. It's a good idea to submit to digg because it's a link nonetheless and if you're able to push it up to the front you are golden. But RELYING on digg is a very bad idea... especially when it is so hard to hit the front.

I've hit Digg frontpage 3 times and it was great... 30,000 visits in about 2 hours each time... more importantly, I got a ton of backlinks. The point is, if your strategy starts and ends with writing decent articles and trying to get them dugg to the front, than you need a new strategy.

[Tyler]

I'm pretty terrible at marketing and advertising, and never had Digg get any traffic to my blog...

In my case, I haven't really done much marketing at all. I mainly just try to write good content, and be consistent by posting one new post every day.

I did do my "Tyler Reviews" thing where I'd link back to other bloggers if they reviewed my blog, and that helped a bit (I received over 100 blog reviews....) And being linked from JohnChow.com has helped a bit, and Shoemoney.com (until he removed me *tear*), but other than those things I haven't done any marketing that I can think of.

Once in a while I'll write a real good article, and then people will link to it. When new visitors find my blog for the first time, a lot of them stick around and subscribe because they like the content.

So, my advice would be to focus on the actual content first. After all, what good is marketing and advertising a blog that nobody really wants to stick around to read anyhow?

[Trusttec]

Trust have you been front page?

The most I was front paged was 3 times in 32 hours so much traffic ever since then my traffic has been at least 500 uniques higher then it used to be every day if not better

[profitline]

Tyler, you might be missing out in doing a little social media networking, it's the latest craze in the internet world. Digg and stumbleupon drives you crazy traffic, you can also use images optimization like Flickr to further spread your blog. There are just so many ways to market your blog nowadays.

[Trusttec]

I think Tyler is doing a good job hes drawing traffic from people who want to be there, he isnt writing link bait just to get people to come, its sort of a unique quality his blog has. With over 850 readers and growing every day I dont think there is anything wrong with his marketing.

[profitline]

That i got to agree, but there might be those who are still not expose to his site, there are millions of surfers out there, you will not know who wants to see what you have installed.

[Tyler]

You are both correct, of course. I've generally always been pretty bad at generating buzz through social networking means though. I've got to the front page of Digg a couple times, but my Diggs generally only get around 8-9 Diggs.

I understand a lot of this depends on how you write the Digg post and title, and of course your actual content you are Digging, but I still suck :-)

It's interesting to think how much a difference it might have had if I held the same amount of prizes in this contest on PublisherForums, on a "top commentors" contest on my blog...

[profitline]

I have never written for the Digg community so i just write what i want on my blog and if there are digg on it, i appreciate them, otherwise, forget it.

[Trusttec]

yeah a 3500 dollar contest on a blog would be huge, if you had that at the begining of 07 who knows where your blog would be now.

Its always fun to think what if I did this or that but in the end you didnt do it so you have to move on and think about what you can do now. I really try not to dwell on the past lately.

[profitline]

Offering $3,500 worth of prizes is pretty cool, many blog have started it already after david airey's successful on his $4000 prizes give away.