3 Simple Steps to Increase Your Blog Readership

Blogs are an integral part of Web 2.0. Companies who were once skeptical about the effectiveness of web 2.0 are quickly acknowledging the value of blogging on the internet.
While setting up a blog is relatively easy, many companies struggle with ideas on how to make their blogs grow.
Here are three simple steps that will help you increase your blog readership:
Post regularly - Post unique
Giving your readers new and interesting content to read everyday is the best way to convert occasional visitors into regulars. Though simple in word, it's not so simple to make the commitment. You must get into a regular pattern of writing unique content and posting it regularly.
Ideally, your blog should have at least three posts a week, if not more. Don't make the mistake of posting three on one day and then none the next week. Most visitors will skim for new content and then move on. They don't have time to determine if you've posted new content. You either did or you didn't.
With the explosion of existing blogs and new ones being created everyday, readers have an endless selection of articles to choose from. If you don't stand out from the crowd, your viewers will go elsewhere. Keep your readership growing by giving them content they are unlikely to find anywhere else. Breaking news prior to a major release will lead to more readers, more comments, and more links to your blog.
Encourage comments - Discourage abuse
While comments are a core blog feature, it is important to carefully consider what your company policy is concerning comments. Allowing comments to be posted un-moderated can generate increased participation but it could also lead to increased chances of offensive remarks and spam comments.
The best way to balance the interaction with your readers with the need to have control over comments is to add a verification tool such as CAPTCHA.
If you choose to moderate comments, make sure you have the resources to regularly approve comments, or note, in a timely manner. Readers hate to be kept waiting and will lose interest and if it takes too long for them to be heard.
Acknowledge Comments - Reply to those who comment
If your reader has taken the time to leave a comment on your post, it is common courtesy to reply, especially to questions. If several comments drift around a single topic, address them all in a single reply.
Starting a blog is easy. Maintaining a blog is much harder. Take the time to develop a complete blog policy and structure before starting. Make sure you can dedicated the time to both posting regular content and for replying to comments.
If you would like to read other articles and watch videos on topics like this one, you can join us at http://www.relativitycorp.com. We have tons of resources on Social Network Marketing written by David C Skul CEO. You can also sign up to get information in you email in box weekly at the site as well.
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Blogging 101 - Optimize Your Blog Posts For Good Search Engine Rankings

Blogging is a good way to interact with people on the Internet, be it they are your friends, clients, prospects, or fans. This is because a blog allows readers to post comments and respond to what you write. It also adds a personal touch to your content which is important if you want to create a list of loyal readers.
Other than interactivity, blog also allows you to get more targeted traffic from the major search engines. You should write your blog posts strategically so that they are optimized for certain keywords that are related to what the blog posts are about. If a blog post is keyword-rich, it will stand a higher chance to get rank well on search engines organic listings for that keyword.
If your blog is about search engine marketing, one of your posts about search engine optimization may get to rank well organically in search engines, driving people who are interested to find out more about optimization to your blog post. In this case, you will be always able to drive new leads to your blog and stand a chance to convert them to your loyal readers.
Sometimes, you should blog about something more general, instead of things that are related to your industry. If your blog is a search engine marketing blog, you can also blog on things on general business, like "the richest man on earth" etc. If your blog post of this is well-written and optimized, you will be getting people from search engines that are looking for the richest man on earth, to stumble upon your blog.
As they are already interested in wealth, there will be chances that they may be interested to find out more about search engine marketing and master it, so as to drive targeted traffic and convert sales. Again, you stand a chance to indirectly convert acquaintances to loyal readers of your blog.
Lastly, no matter how well you can optimize your blog posts on search engines, your content still need to be useful and unique. Even if you manage to get a lot of traffic to your blog, your visitors will not visit your blog again if they find that your content is not useful to them at all. The Internet is always hungry for good content. If you write well and share generously, there will surely be tons of people eager to read what you are going to write.
Cheow Yu Yuan is the co-founder of HomeBizGears.com, an online marketing and branding agency.
Check out more about Online Marketing and Branding at http://www.homebizgears.com
Please feel free to republish this article on your website, or distribute it to your friends or clients, as long as you leave the resource box intact.
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49 Tips To Get Free Traffic To Your Blog

1. Write and submit articles to the article directories.
2. Leave comments on other people's blogs with a backlink to your site.
3. Answer people's questions on www dot answers dot yahoo.com.
4. Post in forums and have a link to your site in your signature.
5. Write a press release and submit it to www dot PRWeb dot com.
6. Advertise your website in the appropriate category on www dot CraigsList dot com.
7. Give an unbiased testimonial on a product/service that you have used in exchange for a backlink to your site.
8. Start a blog and submit it to the 100's of free blog directories.
9. Manually submit your website to the major search engines.
10. Optimize each page of your website for a particular keyword or search phrase.
11. Add a link in your email signature to your website. It's a free and easy way to get a little more traffic.
12. Make a custom 404 error page for your website redirecting people to your home page.
13. Use PPC search engine advertising.
14. Add a "bookmark this site" link to your webpages.
15. Have a tell-a-friend form on your site.
16. Send articles to ezine publishers that includes a link to your website.
17. Hold a crazy content and make it go viral.
18. Give away a freebie (ebook, report, e-course) to keep people coming back to your site.
19. Add an RSS feed to your blog.
20. Submit your site to any related niche directories on the net.
21. Participate in a banner or link exchange program.
22. Create a software program and give it away for free.
23. Purchase the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors.
24. Buy a domain name related to your niche that is already receiving traffic and forward it to your site.
25. Pass out business cards with your domain on them everywhere you go.
26. Start and affiliate program and let your affiliates send you visitors.
27. Start a page on social bookmarking sites such as www dot MySpace dot com.
28. Submit a viral video to www dot YouTube dot com
29. Conduct and publish surveys to your website.
30. Find joint venture partners that will send you traffic.
31. Start your own newsletter or ezine.
32. Use a autoresponder or email campaign to keep people coming back to your site.
33. Purchase ads on other sites.
34. Send a free copy of your product to other site owners in exchange for a product review.
35. Sell or place classified ads on www dot eBay dot com with a link to your site.
36. Post free classified ads on any of the sites that allow them with a link to your site.
37. Exchange reciprocal links with other related websites.
38. Network with other people at seminars or other live events.
39. Purchase advertising in popular newsletters or ezines.
40. Advertise on other product's "thank you" pages.
41. Create a free ebook and list in on the "free ebook" sites.
42. Buy and use a memorable domain name.
43. Do something controversial.
44. Create an Amazon profile and submit reviews for books and other products that you have read.
45. Start a lens on www dot Squidoo dot com.
46. Use a traffic exchange (low quality traffic, but can sometimes be worthwhile).
47. Get referrals form similar but non-competing sites.
48. Create and sell a product with resell or giveaway rights and include a link to your site in it o others pass it around for you.
49. Email your list. If you don't have one, get one.
A lot of more information at http://money-junk.blogspot.com/
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6 Tips for Increasing Blog Traffic

If you've built a blog, your primary focus should be in developing a solid readership. Now that you have your blog running, you've been adding quality content, and you've been engaging your readers, what do you do now?
You need to spend more time promoting your blog. When you market your blog, you're marketing yourself. You can't hide behind a faceless company which makes marketing so much more collaborative and difficult at the same time.
Think of these six methods as a way of reaching out to your audiences and saying, "This is who I am. Come on over and let's chat."
Tip #1 - Technorati Your Blog
Having your blog "claimed" at Technorati offers you several advantages. This includes the opportunity to add your branding or photograph to Technorati, where it becomes visible to millions of viewers who visit this popular site daily. You can also see your Technorati link and get updated link counts.
Tip #2 - Ping Your Blog
A few sites, including Weblogs, ZingFast, and Yahoo's blo.gs offer pinging services. When you sign up for a pinging service, these sites send out a "ping" to inform other pinging sites every time your blog is updated. Viewers who happen to be visiting any other site with pinging services will see your "newly updated blog" flash across their screens.
Tip #3 - Bookmark your Blog
Create profiles at one or several social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. Adding links to your blog as well as excerpts from your blog to your del.icio.us profile increases your visibility among the site's readership. Interested traffic will click on your link and, hopefully, visit your site.
Tip #4 - FeedBurner your Blog
FeedBurner, which is an RSS service, helps you promote your blog's content along with building and measuring your audience. Both of these metrics are essential to your blog marketing strategy.
Tip #5 - Keyword your Blog
Think of your blog as a regular web page and include keywords into your blog postings. The best way to make sure you're including the right keywords is to focus on a topic you're interested in to begin with. If you're trying to promote a topic which doesn't interest you, you're more than likely to end up sounding stiff. Make sure the keywords are relevant to your blog - you want quality traffic that sticks not just traffic that comes through.
Tip #6 - Link your Blog
You should link to relevant blogs and sites that are similar to your blog. But, don't expect others to link back to you. The only way to get links is to be "linkable". You have to become a valuable resource on your topic. Once you become a resource, you won't have to worry about getting backlinks-they'll come naturally.
If you would like to read other articles and watch videos on topics like this one, you can join us at http://www.relativitycorp.com. We have tons of resources on Social Network Marketing written by David C Skul CEO. You can also sign up to get information in you email in box weekly at the site as well.
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Is Blogging for Traffic Even Worth It?

You know they say actions speak louder than words and I don't have a blog. They also say do what I do and not what I say, and of course I don't have a blog, so that's my disclaimer.
However, I am actually talking with someone right now - in fact, I've got somebody who's working on kind of a private blog for a membership product. If things go well with that she'll probably be creating a regular blog for me.
We're talking about actions and probably in the short-term future I will have a blog.
However, answering the second part of your question, how much value is it - I think a blog doesn't have much more value than a website if it just sits there. If you update content to it every day, which is nice and easy to do on a blog just because of the way it's set up - you can literally add a paragraph every day and have some dynamic content pretty easily, then it makes it easy.
The blog is nice and easy because you don't really need to have any special skills to be able to make a blog happen. You can collect opt-in subscribers from a blog. You can direct people to buy from a blog.
In some way you could almost use a blog to replace a website, although I don't recommend it at all, but for somebody that's technically challenged.
In terms of creating traffic with blogs, I think that you have to get in there and work it and learn it. I think you've got to learn how to develop relationships with other people that are blogging and do some linking strategies, similar to what you do with a website, and that involves some work.
I think that you can get a lot out of working the blog, but just recognize that that's one traffic source. Maybe you decide to spend half your time on article marketing and half your time on blogging. Make sure that you're tracking how many of your subscribers are coming from your blog versus how many are coming from your articles, and how much time or money you're spending on each one so you know what works.
To learn more, download my free guide, "How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online" here: How to Generate $15,000 Per Month Online
Sean Mize is an internet marketing mentor who teaches people to generate over $15,000 per month online via automated systems and product funnels.
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7 Sizzling Tips To Get Traffic To Your Blog

You might have the most thought-provoking, cutting-edge blog on the entire internet, but nobody's going to read those compelling posts if you don't aggressively market your blog. Getting traffic to your blog actually isn't that difficult if you're proactive. Following are seven sizzling tips that are guaranteed to help drive traffic to your blog.
Write about current events/interests. If you want to get traffic to your blog, write about current events and things people are actually interested in. For example, if you're in the pet niche and you hear about another pet food recall, you'll want to blog about that pet food recall. Topical posts are far more appealing to blog readers than vague, general posts.
Make comments on other blogs. A great way to get traffic to your blog is to post comments on other blogs in your niche. Be sure that, when you make posts, you also add a link to your Web site, which will help you get traffic to your blog.
Offer RSS feeds to your blog readers. RSS feeds are an extremely effective way of getting traffic to your blog because they immediately inform your readers the moment you post a new blog entry.
Allow readers to post comments. By allowing readers to post comments on your blog, you're going to get a dialogue going, which will naturally get traffic to your blog.
Avoid posting AdSense or other ads. A popular way of monetizing blogs is to post ads, like AdSense. However, many internet marketing experts recommend against posting ads on blogs.
Start a Squidoo lens and add your top blog posts to it. Squidoo is still a hot commodity, an easy way to get traffic to your blog, and search engines - especially Google - are quick to index Squidoo lenses. When you create a Squidoo lens, make sure you add your favorite blog posts to it with a link back to your blog. That way, when a reader likes what he or she reads, all he or she has to do is click on your link to read all of your blog posts.
Add blog entries every day of the week. Publish a post every day of the week if you want to get traffic to your blog. Why? It's simple: During the week, more people spend time online, especially reading, than they do during the weekend. Then why add blog entries on the weekend? Because there simply aren't as many blog postings on the weekend, which means you'll be catering to those clients and potential clients who do like to read online on the weekends.
About the Author:Tim Godfrey is the founder of the exclusive internet marketing tips resource, RocketTheProfit.com. To learn how to generate automated cash from your blog, check out our free 3-part blogging profits course.
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Use Blogging Tools To Get Traffic To Your Articles

If you want to earn money from your writing online, there are a few ways you can do this; one of the easiest ways to write for money online is writing articles for a Paid to Write website such as Associated Content; another one is writing on a blog.
Good Get Paid to Write websites that allow you to write good quality articles, reviews, publish pictures, audio or even video for a performance fee, which means that the more people visit your content, the more money you will earn.
A blog (or weblog) is a mix between a website and an online diary, where you pick a subject and regularly write short articles about your chosen topic. There are lots of ways you can make money from a blog, but the general idea is that the more people will visit your blog, the more money you will make if you use the right tools.
If you write articles on a Paid to Write website and you also have a blog, you have probably discovered that there are some similarities between writing articles and blogging. The similarities lie in the methods used in order to increase your readership. Here are a few ways you can use to increase traffic to your articles that are also being used to render a blog popular:
Getting traffic online means having people visiting your content; if you want to be a successful article writer or blogger, you must get as much traffic as you can, otherwise, it doesn't matter if you are the best writer in the world (although it can help a little bit), you will not earn any money online.
Social Bookmarking in order to get traffic:
Websites such as Digg or StumbleUpon allow their members to bookmark articles or blog posts in an attempt to bring other members of such social bookmarking websites to see your submitted articles and blog posts.
Forums:
Most article websites now have their own forums, where members can ask and answer questions; bloggers can find different forums all over the internet, where they can interact with other people. Using forums in order to increase traffic is a bit tricky, as most forums' administrators hate spam and will not allow you to put links in your posts; however, if you participate often in forums and have interesting things to say, other forum members will get to recognize you and may want to contact you: most forums allow you to display your blog's address or the address of the profile page's address from the article submission website of which you are a member when you set up your forum profile, there is usually also a facility that allows members to send each other personal messages without exchanging email addresses, for privacy and security reasons.
Commenting:
Bloggers use commenting on other blogs as a method of getting traffic to their own blogs; some article submission websites such as Associated Content have a facility that allows their members to write comments at the bottom of other members' articles; using this facility will help you get a few visitors to your own articles too.
The main similarity between writing articles online and blogging is that you must get readers if you want to earn money from them. Of course, there are also differences: if yo have a passion and can come up with something different to say about it every day, blogging is the way to go but if you'd rather write about a lot of various topics, then writing articles on an article submission website that pays you is an excellent way to earn money online.
Internet Junkie is a blog about blogging and all the different ways to make money online. You can join Associated Content for free if you would like to get paid for writing articles; alternatively, if you just feel like browsing, read my other articles on Associated Content.
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