Just 12 tips to promote your blog

How do you promote your blog? This is common question of beginner bloggers. It is not that easy to promote your blog, among the millions of them. However, there are ways of gradually developing your readership and fan following. Here are 12 different methods -the first four are imperative, choose one or more from the rest.

1. Mail the people you know

The first group of audience to your blog will be the people you keep in touch via email. Email all of the people you know to visit your blog and to leave their feedback. This is the first step of promoting your blog.

2. Link out to other bloggers

Linking out to other bloggers is a way of promoting your own blog. Link to the posts you see are useful. Link out to maximum number of useful posts. A new visitor to your blog will think you know where good things are. Chances are higher that new visitor will subscribe to your RSS feed.

Linking out has another advantage too. Most blogs enable pingback. That is, if you link to a blog post, a link to your post automatically appears below the post. You can also expect some visitors that way.

3. Join blog contests

Blog contests are good places to promote your blog. Everyone is now conducting a contest these days. Joining the contests is a way of getting some attention. Read others' contest entries to get an idea of expectations off a blogging contest.

4. Create your own content

First step put last, this is the most important thing about your blog. Have at least a few dozen of useful posts, photos or videos. Your content is what keeps people coming back. It is to your content other bloggers link to.

5. Ask others to link to you

Pro-bloggers never have to ask for links. Their huge fan following will link to their posts on a consistent basis. It is not the case of newbie bloggers. You have to ask for links. However, be judicious in your asking links back. Ask for links from blogs that are similar to yours in terms of content, popularity and attractiveness. Aiming too high, too early can cause frustration. Also, make sure you link out to blogs that are only beginning, has established a bit and are A-grade resource centers.

6. Submit your blog to 500 blog directories

There is a flurry of blog directories today, to which you can submit your blog URL for free or in exchange of a link. Take time to submit to 10-50 directories each week. After three months, you will have 100-500 links pointing to your blog.

7. Submit some articles to 100 highly popular article directories

Article submission has become one main part of online business. While submitting an article, you have the option of inserting a brief bio and a link back to your blog. Hundreds of article directories invite you to submit your articles. You can submit the same article to 100 directories. It translates into 100 links to your blog, because of just one article.

Some of the article directories (like ArticleCodex.com) are revenue sharing ones too.

8. Use Squidoo

If you haven't been to Squidoo.com, take some time to get an idea of the action going on there. It is a cool community. There you can earn cash to create content; sell eBay, Amazon products as an affiliate and can put links to your blog posts, all within the content you create there. You can create your own special pages called lens, over which you have absolute control.

9. Join social networking sites

MySpace, FaceBook, Orkut, etc are places to join discussions and networking with other bloggers.

10. Be active at online forums

Hundreds of forums out there wait for your participation and valuable input from you. Forums are places, where you can ask questions and get answers on just any topic. Join the forums that discuss the topic of your blog. You can put a link to your blog, any time you ask or answer a question. You will see traffic coming to your blog from such forums.

Digital Point Forums, Conquer Your Niche Forum, etc are revenue sharing forums. i.e. they share a part of their revenue with members. Double advantage of monetary rewards and traffic to your blog – it is cool.

11. Join social bookmark sites

Be an active contributor at sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, etc, submitting some nice blog posts by other bloggers and networking with other bookmarkers. You can also promote your own content, once you have established yourself as someone capable of identifying good content.

12. Join blog networks

MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog are two blog communities, that allow you network with fellow bloggers. These two sites also give you a widget that shows recent visitors to the blog. You can advertise your blog in hundreds of others by simply visiting them.

These are all the methods of promoting your blog. They are all time-consuming tasks. Then again, good things don't come for free.

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