Article Writing & Marketing - Powerful Article Writing & Marketing Tips

So, you have a blog and now you’d like some visitors. Unless you bought someone else’s blog the chances are that your new blog has only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe you received a few more hits when you told your family and best friend about your new blog. Maybe you have a link to your blog on your website but that’s about as far as you’ve gone to find readers.

Here are 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, people who have hardly any audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It will help if you work on this list in order. Each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually, once you establish momentum you won’t have to work so hard on find new readers.

Tips for getting traffic to your blog

Write at least five “pillar” articles

A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your readers something. they are usually longer than 500 words and have practical tips or advice. This article could be considered a pillar article because it’s very practical and a good exampl of a “how-to” lesson. This type of article has long term appeal, stays current, and offers value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

Write one new blog post per day minimum

Every post doesn’t have to be a pillar, but try to work on getting your five pillars written at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with news, reviews or short article style posts. It’s important to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is regularly updated so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This will encourage them to bookmark your blog or subscribe to your blog feed. You don’t have to write one post a day all the time but it is important to post every day when your blog is brand new Once you’ve established a loyal readership you still need to provide fresh content but your audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few posts a week instead. The first few months are critical; the more content you produce at this time the better.

Use a proper domain name

If you’re serious about blogging give careful thought to what you call your blog. You need an easy to remember domain name if you want to make it easy for people to easily spread the word about your blog. People will talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world; make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your domain name. Try to get a .com if you can and focus on a relativley short easy to remember domain name rather than worry too much about having the right keywords. though if you can find a memorable domain name that contains your keywords, that’s even better.

Make a habit of commenting on other blogs

When you have pillar articles and daily smaller articles your blog is ready to be introduced to the world. One of the best ways to find readers for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. Aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours, the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog. Most blogs allow you to have your name linked to your blog when you leave a comment, some let you include  your url. This is how people will find your blog. If you get into the habit of leaving comments and always have something valuable to say then people will be more likely to click through to your blog.

Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts

A trackback like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blog article you can create a trackback to their entry. This leaves a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it’s a way of your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments. This is a useful technique. because a trackback leaves a link back to your blog for readers to follow. The added advantage is that it also gets the attention of another blogger. They will probaly come and read your post to see what you wrote about them. They may even become a loyal reader or at least monitor you, and if you are lucky they may ecven create a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

Actively encourage comments on your blog

One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers who follow your work. If they see people commenting on your blog it encourages them to stick around and see what the fuss is about. You can encourage comments by asking questions in a blog post. Make sure you always respond to comments, try to keep the conversation going.

Once you’re blog is becoming populated, submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival

A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often other blogs link to a carnival host and people that have articles featured in the carnival usually gain some new readers.To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/

Submit your blog to www.blogtopsites.com

This tip isn’t going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s easy to do so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get a few incoming readers a day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. Every little helps!

Submit your articles to Article Directories

This won;’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately but it’s worthwhile because you’re simply re-purposing what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week,take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Article Directories. Your article will then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter. The benefit to you comes through your “Resource Box”. When you submit an article to an article directory you get to create a resource box which is like a signature file where you can include one to two sentences and link back to your website or blog. Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so this is a good source of incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter or popular blog publishes your article you can get a sudden rush of readers.

Write more pillar articles

Following these tips will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques listed here will only work when you have strong pillar artilces in place. Without them if you do all of the above you might bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one pillar article each week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was written by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He’s the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

For more information about Blog Mastermind click this link http://snipurl.com/blogmastermind