Launching a new blog -Part 5

June 5th, 2009 | Biz Blogs | 4 Comments »

[Introducing the blog]

Emails: I am sure you have friends who have email-ids. Why not write a simple mail to family and friends and introduce it directly. It’s the best and surest way to get going. If you are not sure how to write an effective mail, I can do it for you absolutely free. 

Links: Add links to your blog in all your online profiles - Facebook, Orkut,LinkedIn, Ecademy, Hi-Five, Everywhere you can.

Personal Ads: There are plenty of places you can advertise for free. But for that you essentially need to get addictive.    

Comment: Copyblogger suggests that exquisite and meaningful comments may really help you get relevant traffic. 

Surveys: Surveys can be used to introduce your blog, get feedback and decide the future strategy/contents for your blog. Here is a brief on how you can use survey as a marketing strategy. 

Socializing: You can participate in a lot of communities relevant to your blog and be an active member there. By being an active member, I mean you have to participate in a helpful and non-promotional way. Try appreciating others work, give honest feebacks, help people solve problems, reach solutions. That way you increase your credibility and popularity on www and ofcourse traffic to your blogs. 

SEO: A lot of good content on the internet miss the eyes of search engines because they are not search-engine friendly. Now SEO is a big topic in itself, but I’d like you to understand the basic of it. Basically you should include keywords (and keyphrases) in your content which are likely to be searched by your readers. Lets say you have an automobile related blog. If you put ” yamaha v/s honda”, or “Yamaha is better than honda because”, or “Comparison yamaha and honda” in your article about yamaha and honda motor bikes you are more likely to appear is search results. Think about, what should a reader search for when your content should appear and mould your content accordingly.   

This is most likely the last part of this series on Launching a new blog. I’d love to know if these steps were helpful. And also, if I can help you any further in launching your blogs. You can subscribe on email for the latest updates.   

Launching a new blog - Part 4

June 3rd, 2009 | Biz Blogs | No Comments »

[Aid your readers]

Your readers might want to come back to your blog later. Can you facilitate that? What if they like to keep themselves upto date with your latest postings. Your blog should always display the gadgets for e-subscription. You can choose gadgets for subscribing on email, subscribing through RSS feeds, add to iGoogle and other feed readers. Most of them would know how to bookmark your blog on the browser, but if you can still provide a small gadget for it, you have better chances of getting frequent visits. You should also find ways to lure your readers to subscribe. See how copyblogger never misses an opportunity to get your subscription. 

Also, among the enthusiastic lot, there is always a deep urge to share things. As soon as they find an interesting thing, they ‘d want share it with their group. If you can add a facility to email, tweet, IM, Digg, Stumbleit you’d be a lot better. 

Having listed all the readership Aids, I’d like to stress on the fact that you should not overdo it. You should carefully select which sharing instruments go best with your needs And more importantly which will be appreciated by your readers. There are plenty of free gadgets available for you to leverage. 

Launching a new blog - Part 3

June 2nd, 2009 | Biz Blogs | 2 Comments »

[Establishing credibility]

Readers are always in a hurry. They are like a typical male sitting in front of the Television with a remote control in hand. You give them a slight distraction and they’ll change the channel. If they dont find you credible enough, in the first few seconds, they’ll almost certainly move on.

Again if you consider your blog as a shop, what do you think establishes your credibility instantly for a new reader? The crowd of customers at your shop - Your readership. If your blog shows a huge number of readers, the new reader will instinctively try to spend a little more time on your blog to figure out why? And that’s when you can have him. Just like if you are new to the market, you’d almost always like to check out the shop with a large crowd of customers. Even if it doesn’t sell what you are looking for. There is some hormone in human body that gives them an attraction towards crowd. 

Three things that display the virtual crowd at your blog are visit counters, visitor locators and comments.      

So you need to establish credibility for a new reader to hook on. But since you’ve just started, you obviously don’t have many readers. You can still keep a readership counter at some corner of your blog. Not at the top, Not in the front row. Keep it at the bottom, or side bottom. Be sure to add it as soon as you start your blog. By the time you reach a good quantity of posts your readership would have silently grown to a few hundreds. And thats when you can display it at a prime location of your blog and showcase it. 

There is another excellent utility that shows location of your readers on a world map. Now when a new reader finds half the world visiting your blog, it creates an instant impression.

And one of the most important and most meaningful thing in blogs is reader’s comments. Make sure its extremely easy for readers to comment on your blog. Many a times, I have found comments to be more useful then the original posts. But reaching a decent quantity and quality of comments will certainly take a lot of time and effort. You have to encourage your readers to comment. And one of the good way to encourage that is to comment on other blogs. If you comment on my posts, I’d almost certainly follow the link to reach your blog. Similarly, if your comment is really cool, my other readers might as well follow the link. Start Now! Comment on this post, it really takes only a minute.         

Launching a new blog - Part 2

June 1st, 2009 | Biz Blogs | No Comments »

[Overstuff your blogs]

The problem with new bloggers is mostly not about the quality, but about the quantity. Remember a reader is like a client visiting a shop. He wants to see it stuffed, he wants to see variety, he wants to see crowd of other costumers. Which shop gathers your attention in the market? The one that is sparsely occupied with stuff or the one that is completely overstuffed?

Nothing is more disappointing for a reader then having to close your blog because there’s nothing left to read. And if you are an irregular blogger, you increase the chances of loosing the reader even more. If you are interesting, you have to be addictive. Consider a new reader finds your blog extremely interesting and visits again tomorrow and finds nothing new. Will he be delighted?

Imagine if popular TV series Friends or How I met your mother were screened irregularily, will they be able to reach this level of popularity? So there are two ways, either one has to be a regular blogger, OR has to create a huge pile before going to the readers OR both.

So overstuff your blog shop before opening it up to customers. How many is enough? I’d say when you have 100 posts, a new reader will certainly never have to quit because he is finished reading. But practically it is good to have at least 20 posts before you start worrying about readership at all.

Launching a new blog - Part 1

June 1st, 2009 | Uncategorized | No Comments »

[How to get readers to my blog?]

Every week there is a new person asking this question in online forums. Perhaps they are dazzled by the popularity of a few online authors, bloggers & marketers. And want to reach same levels of popularity fast. I already explained some essential steps to get started with your self-branding excercise. But there is one thing everyone should keep in mind. 

 What is in it for readers?

Sure your blog is interesting. Everyone finds their stuff interesting enough, but does it cater to the real problems of their readers. I find many interesting blogs everyday. But the ones I hook on to are certainly the ones that solve my current problems, and look like potentially solving my future problems as well. 

 Choose your readers!

Who do you want to read your blog? You have to carefully choose your readers and identify their requirements. OR you may carefully choose things that you wish to write and then focus on how you can erach teh interested lot. Many a times bloggers are confused about these two very different things. Either you write for some “specific” lot of readers OR you have to find the specific lot interested in your thoughts.

So if you want a certain category of readers, think about their requirements.

If you rather want to get readers who just like ‘your’ stuff, focus on finding the right people. It’s apparently gonna take more time.