Promotion Is Free — Joining The Blogosphere

In the first part of this series I suggested that writers start a blog as a virtual shop window for their writing services. If you’ve done that, then you are now part of the blogosphere, and there’s more to participating in it than simply having a blog. Blogging is all about conversations with your readers and with the writers of the blogs you read — and joining in with those conversations can bring huge promotional benefit.

To get started, use Technorati or a blog search engine (Ask Blog Search and Google Blog Search are my favorites) to find out which blogs are publishing in areas that you’re interested in. These may be writing blogs or blogs in your area of expertise. Technorati displays an authority ranking which tells you which blogs are most linked to by others. Visit these blogs and leave useful or relevant comments on any posts that interest you. When you do this, you can include a link to your blog in the appropriate field on the comment form. This doesn’t always give you Google juice, but it does bring you traffic.

When those visitors arrive at your blog, have something of quality to show them. Respond to comments left on your blog and, if appropriate, point readers to other useful resources you have published. This will build your readership, increase traffic to your blog and make your blog rise up the search engine rankings.The reason that this works for your writing business is because clients read blogs too. More and more of my clients are coming to me through this blog. When they search for ‘online freelance writers’ my blog appears in the top 20. (I’m working on moving to the top 10.) This can happen for your chosen keywords, too.