HOW TO: Market Your Blog in 2008

Over the years, I have blogged, designed, and developed for many websites, and I have developed a very good knowledge of marketing on the internet. Being a blogger myself, I know how hard it is for present day bloggers to get noticed in the overly populated blogging industry of 2008.

On that note, I would like to present my methods of marketing a blog in 2008. There are hundreds of ways to market a blog these days and I am going to address a few of my favorites.

Create a Brand

Darren(link) of ProBlogger(link) recently posted an article and video about this topic. In his video he discussed how important it is to present yourself and you blog in a consistent way. Many bloggers these days think design is everything, and redesign every few months trying to keep their site new and fresh, while this can help, I feel it hurts more.

Your blog needs to be a brand, that is consistent with its topics, design, and marketing. I am currently in the process of developing a brand for this site. I have recently ordered business cards with the same logo and color scheme as the site, when it comes time to change the design of the site, I will not flip the design overnight, I will take small steps and transition my readers into the new design. Having a solid brand will help people to associate your content with a reliable source which will lead to more return viewers and increase viewership.

Technorati

Technorati.com is an excellent source for new blogs trying to break into the mainstream. A large amount of my sites traffic comes from Technorati, and its directory services. One of the first things any blogger should do when marketing a new blog is to claim it on Technorati and fill out the blogs profile completely with keyword rich descriptions, and associate it with a lot of different but targeted tags. Technorati is a great way to spread the word on your new blog, and it is totally free and mostly automated once you complete the sites setup.

Digg

Digg.com can be an amazing source for new bloggers, Digg can bring hundreds of thousands of hits to your site in a matter of a day if you have “great content.” While most bloggers already know about Digg and utilize it, many of them make the mistake of spamming Digg which will do nothing but hurt you when you really have an article that is front-page worthy. Don’t post every story on your blog to Digg, post the ones that you feel people will really enjoy reading. If your story is Digg worthy, let your readers Digg it and submit it, don’t force it on them. Submitting a story to Digg then shouting it out to your thousands of Digg friends will not get you on the front-page. Put a dig button at the bottom of your post and let your readers determine if it is Digg worthy.