How to Market Your Blog in Six Steps

How to Market Your Blog in Six Steps

Service business owners across the U.S. are using blogs to promote their business, serve more people, attract more prospects, and retain clients. It's one thing to start a blog and quite another to market it. Follow these six steps if you want to increase traffic.

1) The first rule to remember is to always write quality content to your target market. Sub-par postings will turn away possible clients.

2) Let your readers subscribe to your newsletter or blog updates. Input a simple .php form in a prominent location and offer an incentive to join. Some advanced wordpress templates already have this feature imbedded in the code. Check out smashingmagazine.com for 100 great themes, some of which have this feature.

3) Now for the most time consuming task. Submit new feeds to the following sites.

a.blogsearch
b.blogarama
c.blogbunch
d.blogcatalog
e.blogcode
f.blogexplosion
g.blogflux
i.bloghop
j.bloglisting
k.blogrankings
l.blogtoplist
m.getblogs
n.globeofblogs
o.lsblogs
p.myblog2u
q.quickblogdirectory
r.sportsblogs
s.weblogalot, and
t.dmoz.

These sites will ask you to log in and create an account. That is why it takes so long to submit it to each of them.

4) Use Social Bookmarks. So many to choose from, so little time... Digg, del.icio.us, Propeller, and Technorati are the top sites along with Google, Yahoo, and MSN's bookmark sites. You should also add some bookmark capabilities to your blog. I use ShareThis for mine.

5) Once you have your blog feed listed with the major submission sites, it is time to spread the word. Take massive action and post quality comments to as many of the top blogs as possible. Make sure you're not spamming - just give good advice and leave good questions - and leave a trail of your blog everywhere you can.

6) Give your visitors a way to share your posts with their friends and family. The final instruction is to stay consistent and be patient.
If you have good content and a visually pleasing site, it will attract the right visitors and your blog will grow - right along with the rest of your business. It will likely take at least thirty days (probably more like sixty to ninety) before that happens. Be patient and keep moving forward.
Bill Tamminga, MBA, is the founder of Goal Revolution and a leading expert in business growth. His most recent publication is a business assessment and marketing tool for service business owners entitled Advanced Business Triage.