Building the popularity of your law blog through ‘friends’

Jon Morrow, an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and co-author of Keyword Research for Bloggers, offers some advice on how to build the popularity of your blog through friends.

Why does it work per Jon?

Because bloggers link more often to their friends than anyone else. If you write a reasonably good piece of content that interests their audience, they’ll link to you, mainly because they like you.

The secret to building a popular blog isn’t just writing tons of brilliant content. It’s also having tons of well-connected friends.

By ‘friends,’ we’re not talking the friends you know from your kids soccer games or with whom a enjoy a beer now and again, we’re talking trusted and well known authorities in your niche that have widely read blogs. We’re not diminishing the value of ‘friends’ as we’ve understood the concept for years. ‘Friends’ on the Internet just means something else.

I follow ‘friends’ via Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, del.icio.us, and the like because those ‘friends’ are sharing information and commentary that I value. Sure there’s some true friends included in the group, but by and large, the ‘friends’ I follow are trusted and reliable authorities in their field.

How to make friends with popular bloggers and get them to link to your posts? I’ve always done it by following poplar blogs and sharing an interesting post of theirs with my readers, offering my take on the subject.

Jon says that’s not enough any longer. Here’s a few of his ideas with my take.

• Write a guest post that gets lots of traffic and adoring comments. It works. LexBlog has any number of lawyer clients who have guest posted on popular blogs. The result has brought greater notoriety and more blog followers.
• Attend conferences that all of the ‘Who’s Who’ of your niche go to and network your tail off. While I am not a social butterfly, I do make a point of introducing myself to thought leaders who I have been following and whom I respect. Make sure it’s genuine, but go up and shake their hand and let them know you really appreciate their work and have been a follower for some time. The opportunity may arise to tell them what you do. Follow up with an email and offer to connect via LinkedIn.
• Email them an irresistible question, hoping to spark a discussion. This works wether you’re asking the question through a LinkedIn connection or just a standard email. Blog the answer providing your commentary.
• Leave lots of truly memorable comments. Absolutely works, so long as the comments are of value. Do not comment for the sake of dropping your name, you’ll look like a fool.
• Interview them in either a post or a podcast, making sure to ask lots of intelligent questions. I’ve found email interviews are best for the most popular people, whose time is limited. Keep it to 4 or 5 questions. But if you’ve got a good podcast going, give it a shot. I’m happy to be a guest when the interviewer has their act together and we’re only talking 20 minutes.
• Give the above a few months, and then start pointing them to your best and most relevant content. It works. I often one line an email to a popular blogger letting them know of a post of interest.

To be a success on the Internet, remember one rule. You can have everything you want if you’ll just help enough other people to get what they want. As Jon puts it, ‘we’re just talking reciprocity.’

Contrary to what many people think, A-list bloggers aren’t islands, separate and self-sufficient. They deal with problems and annoyances, just as much as anyone else. If you can help alleviate them, they’ll thank and remember you for it.

The key is finding ways that you can be genuinely useful to them. Make yourself relevant and then use that opportunity to start building a relationship.

Great post Jon – and another reason to call Brian Clark, publisher of Copyblogger, a ‘friend.’