In a previous post, I argued that getting attention was crucial to having success as a blogger. I want to be more specific about that point. Obviously, you have to earn the attention of your target audience. It’s also a good idea to get the attention of the other bloggers in your niche. This is especially important for new bloggers with a small reader base.
If you’re a new blogger and you don’t have a lot of traffic, how will you find more readers? You can focus on search engine rankings but those take time to improve. A more effective method is gaining the attention of other bloggers and hoping they will link to you. Fortunately, most bloggers are helpful and will gladly link to you as long as you provide value in some way.
In this post, I’ll talk about practical ways to get the attention of bloggers. And then I’ll close with 4 important principles.
Practical Ways
Writing a Guest post. Some popular bloggers built their audience through guest posts. Guest posts work well, since bloggers are always looking for fresh content.
Linking out. This method seems to be underutilized yet it can be very effective. Bloggers like to check their traffic logs. If you can send them some traffic, they may link back to you.
Leaving blog comments. One of the things that can make a blogger’s day is a well-written comment on their blog. If you leave a couple of these comments, you can bet the blogger will be checking out your blog.
Using Twitter and Facebook. There are other social media sites where bloggers hang out but these two sites seem to be the most popular right now.
Emailing. Email is old school, but it’s definitely effective. Don’t spam though. Instead, most of your email messages should be about their blog and relevant issues within the industry.
Submitting their content to social voting sites. Blogger appreciate this, since it shows you like their content and you want them to get more traffic. Also, email them whenever you do this, since many bloggers don’t regularly monitor social voting sites.
4 Important Principles
- Consistent repetition is the key. Now you don’t want to be overbearing, but it usually takes a couple connections for bloggers to notice you. Also, even when a blogger finally links to you, you still want to keep in touch so they won’t forget about you.
- Choose wisely the bloggers you target. I focus mostly on up and coming bloggers that get a moderate amount of traffic. The popular bloggers can be hard to network with since they get a lot of emails and comments. And the bloggers that don’t get a lot of traffic, well, they don’t get a lot of traffic.
- Don’t be afraid to promote your stuff. Now you don’t want to spam, but once you’ve provided a good amount of value for the blogger, feel free to send them your best content and ask for a link.
- If a blogger is not receptive to you, move on to another blogger. There’s no sense in wasting your time.
Over to You
How have you gotten the attention of other bloggers?
How have other bloggers gotten your attention?