Put Your Blog Promotion on Autopilot

Here’s a blog promotion recipe for failure a lot of folks insist on using:

Create a mediocre blog that doesn’t offer anything original, useful or insightful … and then wear yourself out trying to promote it.

I’ve seen this blog promotions “strategy” time and time again, and I’ll never understand it. Here’s a much better way to go about it:

Create a useful and informative blog full of original content aimed at a certain audience … and then let the blog promote itself through word-of-mouth.

I don’t know about you, but that second approach appeals to me more than the first one. This is what I mean by putting your blog promotion on “autopilot.” When you create the kind of blog that is highly useful to your intended audience, they will be much more inclined to cite it as a resource. In doing so, they will often link directly to your blog, mention it in forums, list it as a resource on their own blog, etc.

Over time, this has a snowball effect. The more people who link to your blog as a valuable resource, the stronger your link popularity. This will have a direct (and positive) impact on your search engine rankings. You will also earn more traffic from all of those citation / recommendation hyperlinks. And the more people who find you, the more links you’ll acquire … over and over, ad infinitum.

This is the snowball effect I mentioned, and it’s a way to put your blog promotion on autopilot. There will be so many people promoting your blog that you won’t even have to. Instead, you can spend your time creating useful content — exactly what a serious blogger should focus on.

Sound easy? Well, unfortunately it’s not. You’ll have to work hard to create the kind of blog that creates this kind of buzz and attraction. But who ever said blog promotion was easy? Not me!

The following tips will get you started on the right foot:

The Kind of Blog That Promotes Itself

Here are the things you should focus on when striving for the snowball effect I mentioned earlier. The best business blogs — those that generate a lot of buzz and attention — have the following things in common.

• They are updated often with timely content. In some industries, such as real estate and finance, this is more than just a nice quality … it’s a necessity.
• They are insightful and original in some way. The best business blogs don’t just regurgitate what others have said. They offer new ideas and perspectives.
• They are well organized and make good use of categories, linking, etc. This helps readers find the information they want the most.
• They are written in a clear, conversational tone. Save the corporate jargon for your positioning papers — it has no place on a business blog. While you’re at it, feel free to inject a little personality into your blog. It will make the writing easier for you, and more enjoyable for your audience.