How To Build Traffic To Your Blog

With the growing interest in blogging as a means of online promotion and branding, a lot of marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books and services. But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by the boatload. If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well. Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger. 1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use the principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers. If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly. Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post. Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often. 2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines I cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs" http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/ Another list of sites to submit your Blog. http://pingomatic.com 5. Build Links To Your Blog I recommend the methods here as the best ways to get links pointing to your blog * Link to your blog from each page on your main website * Trackback to other blogs in your posts * Post legitimate comments on other blogs with related topics * Offer to exchange links with other similarly themed blogs and websites 6. Edit Your Blog Posts Into Articles One of the best methods for promoting your website is to write articles and submit them to article directories. The suggestion for extending this to edit your blog posts into articles and submit them to directories came from the coach at "Explode Blog Traffic" who also has other noteworthy suggestions at his blog here. http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/write-articles/submit-articles.htm 7. Create Buzz About Your Blog Creating a buzz about your blog posts and topic in the local and online media will give your marketing a viral component. * Create a controversy around your blog or it's topic. * Distribute bumper stickers or other merchandise with your blog's URL and tagline. * Write a press release about something newsworthy and tie it in with your blog topic. 8. Capture Subscribers By Email It may seem strange for a blogger to send out updates by email, but email is still the #1 choice of most people who want to receive news and information. Using a free service like Bloglet to manage your subscriptions is easy and it allows your subscribers to manage all their subscriptions from one interface. http://ebizwhiz-publishing.com/rssresponder.htm These tips should give you a good start to building your blog traffic.