Build blog readership by reading what other bloggers are writing

Darren Rowse at Pro Blogger shares an excellent tip for marketing your blog. Build your blog readership by monitoring what other bloggers are writing.

Go to Technorati and Google Blog Search and key in words and phrases that you blog about. For me one search may be ‘law firm blogs.’ Add a subscription to the search results in your newsreader for each of your searches.

Click on interesting blog posts you’ll then see. As Darren instructs, leave helpful and relevant comments on each of those blogs – making suggestions, giving tips, adding your take. In each case leave the URL of your blog in the URL field so that readers of the blogs you’re commenting on can find your blog.

Though you need to be careful that you don’t appear to be spamming for links, Darren advises leaving a few links in the comments pointing to useful pages on your blog to help the blogger and their readers find more information.

Does it work? Darren found around half of those that he left comments for in marketing his camera blog responded to him either with follow up comments or an email. In each case they said they’d check out his blog. he also found many linked up to his blog in days and weeks following me making contact.

Here’s the cliff’s notes version of Darren’s keys for monitoring keywords, read his whole post to learn more.

• Use Technorati Watchlists and Google Blog Search Blog. Set them up to report any blog that uses certain keywords and/or URLs.
• Be useful and generous. Respond to what people are saying in a genuine and helpful way. Don’t spam their comments with your links but answer questions, make suggestions, share your experience etc.
• Build your blog one reader at a time. Some bloggers are only interested in building traffic to their blog quickly and any technique that doesn’t have the potential to bring in hundreds and thousands of new readers is ignored. One new reader who comes back on a daily basis over a number of years because they’ve been genuinely helped by you can have a significant impact upon your blog not only in terms of their own visits and comments – but when they’re a blogger the potential for them to bring their readership with them can be significant.

For almost 4 years I’ve been following others’ blogs and commenting on their posts, by adding a comment on their blog post itself or by referencing their blog post on a new blog post of mine. It’s been the signal best method for increasing my readership.