Social Networking: How to Promote Your Blog

Blogging is one of the easiest ways to get high rankings in the search engines. If you can pick a popular topic that you're passionate about and then write about it, you can get a lot of readers.

The problem is that a lot of bloggers rely on search engines as their main source of traffic. If you write on a topic that's pretty competitive, it makes it very hard to get your blog to rank high, and you won't get many visitors, much less find the readers who may be looking for what you are writing about.

So, to get more traffic to your blog, you need to find more ways to promote. One easy way to do this is with social networking sites. The advantage of using a social networking site is that you have a lot of options when promoting.

Your first step, when promoting on a social networking site is to make sure that you add a link to your blog in your profile. This lets others know that you have a blog, and they can decide whether or not to click over to your blog and read it.

If you don't have a blog, then you have the option of using the blog available on the social networking site, if one is offered. This will allow readers to read your content. You can post your product reviews, articles, tutorials, and even videos or audios you've found on your topic. The only disadvantage I see here is that although your blog posts may be public on these sites, it won't be picked up by the search engines, so it's best to have an external blog and then cross post some of your entries to the social networking site. Also, you need to be careful about making your content too commercial. Otherwise, you might get banned from the site.

If the social networking site allows you to add RSS feeds, then you should add your blog RSS feeds to your profile. This saves you the time of posting any blog
entries to your profile, as your blog entries will automatically show up on your profile. Sites like Orkut, that don't offer blogs, give you this option.

I like using RSS feeds for mine because it allows me to create a profile that's constantly updated, always providing new content to my visitors and readers. Another advantage here to using RSS feeds is that readers will have to click through to your blog to read the entire post. If you offer an email subscription, then this gives you another opportunity to get the reader to subscribe to your blog.

If the site offers forums or groups, make sure you add a link to your profile in your signature file. You just need to know a little HTML in order to code your link unless the site offers an editor that will code it for you. Again, avoid being too commercial. Your goal is to get others to click through your link to your blog and subscribe, not sell them something.

Finally, many of these sites have private messaging, as well as bulletins you can send out. When sending out private messages, you don't want to spam or just try to sell the person something. Make sure you are friends first. With bulletins, try to write a catchy headline and make your bulletin newsworthy. You want to use a soft sell. Don't make others feel like they're being sold to.

About The Author-- Want to learn how top marketers use social networking to expand their businesses? "Social Marketing" teaches you how to easily bring in more profits in just a few minutes a day. Meet me on MySpace. Jinger Jarrett is the author of "Internet Marketing for Free: The GUIDE." (On Amazon).

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