As you launch yourself along your journey through the blogging world it is important to establish yourself as a blogger within your specific niche and within the blogging community in general. Most established bloggers are quite welcoming of new bloggers and some will even assist you with advice or provide services that will help establish your online presence. Looking longterm at the bigger picture, it is also imperative that you become aware of your ever growing and expanding online reputation. However, this topic will be discussed in greater depth and detail another time. For today, let’s take a look at the steps that one must take to drive initial chunks of traffic to your new blog.
The WordPress Community – Your Source for Constant Traffic
Having established a blog on WordPress.com you are automatically connected to the WordPress community of thousands of online blogs. The great thing about the WordPress community is that whenever you tag a post you have written up, it’s automatically shared with other WordPress community members who utilize the same tag word in their posts. As you can see in the following screen shot, within the Administration console under Dashboard > Tag Surfer you can see all the tags that I use for my article posts listed in alphabetical order. Whenever someone within the WordPress community posts an article that uses your tags, it is listed on the Tag Surfer page. This is great news for you because as your tags are shared with others they will automatically receive a preview of your article posts and may even click through into your blog.
The Tag Surfing feature in WordPress is also a great way to meet and connect with like-minded bloggers who share the same passions as you.
Another feature of the Tag Surfer is it allows you to delete and add specific tags that you would like to subscribe to or unsubscribe from. It is in some ways very similar to an RSS Feed Reader, however instead of subscribing to specific Blogs, you subscribe to receive posts related to the tags that interest you most.
Within your first few weeks of blogging you will find that even if you do nothing else but write good quality content on a regular basis with appropriate tags and categories, that you will indeed generate a good solid amount of traffic to your blog through the WordPress Blogging community.
Finally, Tag Surfing is also a great means of collecting interesting ideas for your blog posts. If you are ever stuck for a blog post idea, simply surf your selected tags and see what others are writing about. Maybe you can piece together ideas from a combination of article posts to create something that is very different, creative and unique. Otherwise you may just expand upon an article and then link back to the blogger’s site if one of your readers wants an alternate perspective. As a general rule of thumb, bloggers love links, and will appreciate you taking the time to link to their articles through your blog posts. They may even reciprocate with a link back to your article or blog.
Signing Up to Blog Directories
It is important as a new blogger to sign up to a variety of blog directories that will get your blog’s name recognized within the blogging world. Blog directories are simply search engines for blogs.
When you are a newbie, it is worthwhile to sign up to a number of blog directories in order to expand your subscriber reach. Just keep in mind that some of these directories require you to past a piece of code into your blog that links back to the blog directory. Once you receive this snippet of code, all you have to do is paste it into a Text Widget, as explained in my previous post.
Here is a list of blog directories that I signed up to when I launched miWisdom:
- Blog Flux - The directory currently has over 107,000 blogs. It’s free to setup an account and they provide you with a range of supporting services to assist you with your blogging ventures. Their goal is to be the single source of services for bloggers.
- Technorati - Claim that you are the owner of your blog by registering it with Technorati. Many bloggers consistently look at their Technorati ranking in order to evaluate the performance of their blog. I would highly recommend registering your blog at this directory.
- Blog Top List - This directory requires you to place a couple of buttons on your blog that allow your readers to vote for you. The more votes you accumulate the more exposure you will receive within the directory.
- Blog Skinny - Another directory that provides you with a button for your blog. In the early days I did receive consistent traffic from this source and I saw my ranking climb accordingly.
- Top Blog Area - Another similar directory to the Blog Top List site. Submit your blog, score higher points and rankings and you will drive more traffic to your site.
There are many more blog directories out there. However, be wary as many of them will ask you to place small buttons on your site. Having a few buttons is fine, but too many buttons will downgrade your blog and may hurt your blog’s credibility.
Get Involved within Blogging Communities
I won’t go into much detail here about what to do specifically within each blogging community, however I will provide you with a general overview of the most popular communities where you should establish your presence and build your reputation.
- My Blog Log - This is a thriving blogging community that allows you to connect and develop relationships with other bloggers based on the topics that interest you most. Sign up, register your blog, and start networking. If you network effectively you could potentially drive many new readers to your blog.
- Bumpzee - Very similar to My Blog Log, however not as popular. Although it still has a strong and thriving community of bloggers who share your interests and passions. Sign up and start networking with like-minded bloggers immediately.
- Blog Catalog - This is another popular social blog directory that could potentially connect you with many like-minded bloggers.
There are many more blog communities out there. However, you will quickly find that time constraints will not allow you to give your full attention to all of them. I would suggest focusing on 2 or 3 of the most popular communities to begin with. Build your online reputation through these networks on a daily basis and drive traffic to your website.
The Stumble Effect
In my next post I will discuss the “Stumble Effect” that could potentially drive hundreds if not thousands of visitors to your blog within a matter of hours. If you have any further questions or comments about this post please let me know.
April 5th, 2008 at 9:10 pm
Nice write up. Can u help me how i can work in stumble.
waiting for your prompt response.
Regards
Lalita Negi
April 6th, 2008 at 12:10 am
Lalita,
My next post about driving traffic through StumbleUpon will be written up within the next few days. If there is something specific that you would like me to share please let me know and I will endeavor to include it within the article.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Hello. Great job. I did not expect this… This is a great story. Thanks!
October 12th, 2009 at 4:38 am
I have listed my blog on these directories. I am fairly new to the blogging world and have found that there is much to learn out there. Driving traffic to a site is not a very easy thing to do, it is a lot of hard work and dedication. A lot of people have told me that I am wasting my time, but you know blogging is something that I like doing and the more I blog the more I will grow both as a blogger and as a person. Thanks for the info! Good luck to all new bloggers out there.
February 19th, 2010 at 8:26 pm
It’s really a great advantage when you know how to write an article but for those who doesn’t have the skill in writing, link building is the one of the best strategy, another thing that I do when it comes to driving traffic is I search what sites are getting a lot of traffic and as of now without a doubt, game sites experience overflowing traffic, we don’t want to lose the chance of having a share of that traffic, what we need to do is we get quality and fun games pasted in our sites to drive more traffic.
March 6th, 2010 at 1:44 am
As a marketer for the last two years i try to call on as many blog as possible, by doing so i keep myself in the loop for new ideas. The knowledge you have supplied has given me a great idea that i plan to combine into my site. I also plan on giving your blog address to my email list, so they too can find new ideas.