MappingTheWeb //

A few fellow bloggers have asked me, “How do I market and promote my blog to drive more traffic and page views?” My answer to them was simple: they were asking the wrong question in the first place.

If you want to catch a fish, you don’t concentrate your attention on the fish. You focus on your bait and your lure. If the bait is attractive, the fish will come. The same can be said for blogs. Don’t focus on the traffic itself. Focus on the content. If the content is good, the traffic will follow.

Thereby, the number one way to promote a blog is to produce high quality content on a regular, consistent basis. I cannot emphasize this enough. This is the single most important aspect of blogging. This is assuming you have already strategically carved out a niche for your blog, which is also very important. If the quality is down, an influx of new traffic will not follow and current traffic will fall off. Furthermore, if the frequency of posts falls off, you will lose readership and loyalty. Therefore, quality and consistency are key.

Another natural way to promote your blog is to comment on other blogs and add trackbacks to posts. This keeps the discussion going and adds value to other blog posts. I do not even consider this ‘promoting’, but rather staying true to the whole blogging mentality. I believe it is essential for all bloggers to participate outside their own domain in order to add value and soak in new perspectives on varying items and topics.

Other effective marketing tactics, such as SEO, help but only to a certain extent.

For most bloggers, marketing and promotion should not be a concern. Unless of course your name is Mike Arrington or Om Malik, and your blog is your business. In this case, you must treat your blog like a business, and any successful business needs a marketing plan.

Nonetheless, blogs are lifestyle and a place to express your views. Treat it like a dissemination tool rather than a money printer.