Surefire Tips to Successfully Promote Your Blog

For those of us who own social networking websites (blogs, social bookmarking, etc.) it is important to figure out how to properly market yourself. Most of the people who get into the business think that visitors will just appear out of no where, sort of like the "if you build it, they will come" idea.

Unfortunately, nothing in this business works that way. You either have to have a great product (content, stock or otherwise), or you have to be really good at spreading the word through advertising channels. Sometimes the first isn't even enough, so it's important to be strong in both practices.

Tools for Promotional Marketing

There are several available methods for getting the word out about your genius creation. You could go with traditional advertising avenues, such as Google Adwords, which will strategically place your ads based on context for not a lot of money.

You could also use a traffic exchange program, such as Blog Mad or Blog Explosion, which will give you a good ratio (typically 1:1) of visits to someone else's blog in exchange for visits to your own. The idea is basically that you will use their auto-surf engine to visit other blogs, and other people will do the same and visit your blog. It's a great way of boosting actual hits to your blog but ad programs such as Google Adsense hate that sort of thing, so be careful.

Another great method is merely exchanging links with another blogger in your niche. This is one of the best methods for getting great back links as well as good traffic flow to your website. Just trade links with your fellow blogger, and you'll be helping each other out! Make sure to trade with bloggers who not only have similar content but also appropriate content.

What I never hear mentioned as a tool for marketing is actually going out into the real world and actually talking with people face to face about your blog. This is arguably the best way to market yourself. People gain trust much quicker with a face-to-face meeting than one over the internet. A fantastic way of meeting people with similar interests is to go to the Social Networking Conference! As you'll read on their website, their entire focus is "on the business management and marketing of a Social Networking and Online Personals website." If you're really serious about promoting yourself and your blog, I urge you to get out there and talk about it with people one-on-one, which brings me to my next topic.

Promotion by Foot

Yeah, get out there! Go walk down the street and talk to people about your business. If you can't go to the Social Networking Conference, do the next best thing and go to your local mall to talk about your product. I guarantee you if you hand out 100 business cards, 50 of them will get thrown in the trash as soon as you walk away and 25 will get thrown out later but the 25 left over are most likely going to be going to your website. And this time it's different; this time they've seen your face and it has created a personal curiosity that just browsing to your blog could never create. In a sense, they become your fan. Cool, huh?

Be creative! Get your friends together and walk down the street holding a big picket sign with your website on it, big as life! Hire someone to stand on a street corner for a week with that sign. Pay them more to dance while doing so.

Conclusion

Most people fail to realize that owning a social networking site is very similar to owning a brick and mortar business. It's all about pleasing your customers. So write excellent content and then give them a chance to see it! Make sure you pay attention to first impressions though! Go to the Social Networking Conference, but if you can't do that, get out there and talk to people (hey, why not? it's free!).