The tools of the trade – Gaining more blog traffic, a 30 day adventure in blogging – Day 4

Part four in a series on driving more traffic to your blog in 30 days.

So, have you been playing along? If so, you should probably know what your routine for the day should have been. If not, I’ll recap.

1. Post a new entry to your blog (or blogs) and if possible, mention someone else’s blog in your post, making sure to send a trackback or pingback to them as well.
2. Go find 5 blogs that you’ve never commented on before and leave a relevant comment on the entry of your choice.

Why do I mention adding a new post before commenting elsewhere? So that any reader that comes to peek at your blog finds fresh new content waiting for them. It has today’s date on it, it’s in reference to something that’s current in the world, and if it was written well, it might just bring them back. Search engines will almost always deposit a reader somewhere deep down your entry archives. Many people will click over to your main blog page to see if there’s anything new, don’t disappoint them!

Finding other blogs to leave comments on may be a bit of a challenge, depending on the niche you write in, and regardless of what you may think, every blogger is a niche blogger. Even if you’re basically just a daily journal writer, your writing is targeted…mostly to other daily journal writers, but it’s targeted nonetheless.

If you’re going to comment on new blogs, you’ve got to find them. The best places that I’m aware of to do this are sites like BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. These services cost you nothing, but in the case of BlogCatalog, I receive at least 15 visits per day just to CbsoP, and it’s been responsible for driving most of this blog’s traffic up to this point. To gain the most advantage from these sites, you’ll need to register. In the case of BlogCatalog, spending some time in the discussions is a good idea as well. I’m honestly not as familiar with MyBlogLog, so I’ll discuss their benefits in detail later.

Once you’ve registered, go check out their blog directory. A quick look at the tag cloud will point you to blogs like your own, or at least to other bloggers with similar interests. From there, finding new blogs to comment on won’t be a problem. Finding a lack of them might!

It’s probably a good idea at this point to start keeping a liest of the “New” blogs you’ve commented on. If you’re like me, a good portion of the blogs you come across will end up in your RSS reader and you’ll probably comment there again. This is a good thing! Being active in other bloggers comment sections can only help you to gain friends, acquaintances and in the end, readers of your own. I’m not recommending that you spend your entire day dropping comments, but it never hurts if you’ve got something of value to contribute to the discussion and in the end, most blogs are forums for discussion and community. If you’re a part of it, you’ll get attention. Just make sure it’s positive attention unless you’re very good at damage control!

Now that you’ve got tools to find new blogs to comment at, take a look around both BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Send a few friend requests or add a few friends. Join some communities (or neighborhoods) leave a comment or two for the other bloggers. If you’re tracking your statistics like you should be, you’ll see some of those people stop by your blog. One or two of them might mention your work on their own blog, and you’ve just gained the most valuable thing another blogger can offer you, a share of their readership.

If everything is going well, you may have already noticed a few new faces stopping by your blog after just a few days worth of effort. Tomorrow we’ll get in to some of the finer points of keeping them thre once they’ve landed, and getting them to subscribe to your feeds. RSS is the bread and butter of the modern blog and really should not be underestimated.

Until tomorrow, I remain as always, your humble narrator and partner in crime.

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