Blogger Application Settings



Set your blog to ping weblogs.com. Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes. When this setting is updated , Blogger will notify weblogs.com that you have updated your blog. That means your blog will be included in various "recently updated" lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Add your blog to Blogger's listings. This is a really obvious one but at some point during the blog creation process there's a chance many of you initially thought "Oh, I'm not sure I want to be public just yet. I'll mark that as 'no.'" Go back in there and mark it "yes." When you add your blog to our listings then it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It's like opting-in to traffic. Do it.

Blogging Technique Suggestions

Write quality content and do it well. Use proper punctuation, capitalize letters when appropriate, and don't overuse the ellipsis. If your "style" is bad writing, worse grammar, no punctuation, and an ugly design, that might be okay for a niche crowd.

Publish regular updates. To lower the traffic to the blog the easiest way is to stop posting so frequently. The reverse of this experiment is also true: the more you blog, the more traffic you will get. You've got to think about it like watering a plant—do it every day and the plant will grow. Hopefully your blog is not like the plant in.

Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to cultivate one. When you keep your audience in mind, you are focusing your writing. This helps you develop a stronger voice and is instrumental in creating the brand that is you as put forth through your blog. Again, this is more of an overarching, long-term technique for building traffic and won't have immediate results. Nevertheless, focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

Marketing Action Items

The third and final group of promotional techniques are simple actions you can take to publicize your blog. This category is theoretically unlimited.

Put your blog URL in your email signature. Whenever I see a blog url in an email signature, I always click on it to see who I'm dealing with. Especially if it's someone I've never met. Email gets forwarded all the time so even if you only send out a five notes a day to friends, the potential number of people clicking over to your blog is in the thousands.

Link to other blogs. This is a great way to get traffic. Here's what happens when you link to another blogger: she sees you in her referral logs, checks out your blog, and then very likely links back to you or at the very least makes a mental note to do so. Links are the currency of the blogosphere and it takes money to make money so start linking.

Be an active commenter. Try to leave comments on the blogs you read every day. This is in the same vein as linking. Leaving a comment on someone's post can make their day. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least. So if you feel inspired, leave a comment or two in your blog travels. It behooves you.