EW January 14, 2008

I just read a great post from Seth Godin (via Problogger).  His post was about the power of recommendation. 

He wrote about posting excerpts from his new book last month and also giving a recommendation for a book by author Garr Reynolds.  He built a Squidoo page about that book with an affiliate link to Amazon. 

Guess which book has gotten more sales?  His book or Garr’s book? 

Seth checked his stats and it shows that he’s sold more of Garr’s book than his own book.

What people say about you is much more important than what you say about yourself.

There’s a lot of talk about self-promotion but it’s a lot more beneficial and effective when other bloggers promote you.

When people talk about you and especially when they recommend you, you gain credibility, mindshare, and exposure.

So, how do you get other people to start talking about you?

Unique Content

First, and you’ve probably heard this a million times, write unique content. 

This is easier said than done because it takes work to be creative. 

The key to creating unique content is knowing your niche well.  If you do this, you’ll be able to see which topics, viewpoints, and media formats are not being covered well in your niche.  Also, you’ll be able to gauge your competition.  Can you produce something better than them?  Can you create something different from them?

When you find a "gap" you can fill, you have a much better chance of being recommended because no one else is doing what you’re doing.

For example, in my last blog post, I talked about producing audio and video content.

Many niches don’t have a blog with quality video and audio content.  If you produce multimedia content, you’ll greatly differentiate your blog from the other blogs in your niche.  This leads to people talking about you because you’re unique.

Here’s another example from the make money online niche.  Surprisingly, this niche does not have many good tutorials.  If you write a lengthy tutorial filled with screenshots (like this one), you’ll probably get a lot of links and traffic

Therefore, do some market research.  And then have a brainstorming session and come up with content ideas that aren’t being produced in your niche.

Network

Second, network. 

You may not agree with this but I think networking is more important than unique content.  Networking allows your content to be found.  Even non-unique content can get popular because the blogger that produced the content has many blogger friends.

Networking is simply building friendships with other bloggers in your niche.

Think about how you make friends offline and try to translate those methods on the blogosphere. 

For me, I find out where people hang out and then I go there to meet people.  When I’m online, I do a similar thing.  I visit places where other bloggers hang out to network with them.  Depending on the niche, these places could be a forum or a social voting site. 

Also, I find that I can meet new friends through my existing friends.  On the internet, I ask my existing blogger friends if they could introduce me to other bloggers.

Here are some other ways and places where you can build friendships with other bloggers in your niche.

There’s more that can be said about networking.  Here are 2 posts that can give you more ideas:

The Final Ingredient: Time

Just like profitable blogging usually takes time, so does getting mentioned consistently by other bloggers.

If you’re only starting out, it will probably take a couple of months of producing unique content and networking before other bloggers start talking about you.

But give it some time and you’ll soon be a recognizable blogger in your niche.

Feedback

What have you done to get other bloggers to promote you?