17 Ways to Promote your Blog

I hope that our previous discussion on blogs influenced you, in some way, to go out looking to join the let’s–all–be-bloggers bandwagon. It would be really nice to know that you all have sparkling new blogs. That would mean that the blogoshere got larger, cool. This reminds me of my first foray into blogging. Few things beat the excitement that comes with setting up a new blog. How will people react? How many readers will like it? So many questions. No answers. Anxiety.

Unfortunately, a few days down the road many new bloggers are worried. Their bubble burst. Your parents siblings, significant–others and friends have all been to the blog that you told them so much about. Nobody comes anymore. (Unless you threaten them with those …you can’t even visit my ….emails). To avoid the heartache, spend some time promoting your blog – and get those much–sought–after regular readers!

There are three main methods of blog promotion:

Technical Techniques
Theses have to do with the more technical aspects of your blog

1. First things first. Your blog has to appeal to the eye. Nobody wants to read what they can’t bear to look at. If you got your blog through blogger or other fine service, take some time to choose one of the more aesthetically correct templates. As for professional blogs, it would pay to hire a professional website (or blog) designer.
2. Provide a site feed to your blog. Most blogs already do this out of the box but just make sure it is that important! We all get tired of continually checking a site for updates. It would be much better if we were automatically notified of any updates, right? A site feed does just that. It allows people to subscribe to your blog and be automatically notified of any changes or updates you make. If you really want to do cool amazing things with your site feed, check out the Godsend that is feedburner.
3. All your posts should have the ‘email-this-post’ feature. This allows your readers to email your articles to their friends (and publicise your blog).
4. Register your blog with sites such as technorati, blogtopsites or weblogs. These sites track many blogs. Therefore, many people search such sites for interesting reads. If you are not registered your blog cannot be found by such people.
5. Join a blog webring. These are blog communities where you cannot only make good friends but also make frequent readers. A good place to start would be the one and only Kenya Bloggers Webring (KBW).