Blogging Questions & Answers 5

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It is time for Blogging Questions & Answers! Many people stated they love to read these posts, so keep the questions coming!

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You can ask one either by posting a comment on this post or via the Contact Form.

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\nEarth-Byte.com asks:

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What do you advocate as far as getting your newly launched blog out into the intarweb?

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I suppose you are asking how to get a newly launched blog promoted on the Internet?

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Well, before getting started with the content and with the promotion aspects I would make sure that the blog is optimized. You can read some tips for that purpose on the article “Blog Setup: 40 Practical Tips.”

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Once your blog is functional and optimized, I would also recommend writing some good content before promoting it. After all you don’t want the new readers to get disappointed with what they will find there.

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There is no magic number here, but I would wait until you have at least 10 articles in place, some of them being pillar articles.

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Finally, once all it set and the content is there you can begin promoting the blog. Here are some activities that you might want to do initially:

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• Send emails to bloggers in your niche introducing yourself and the blog

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• Avoid begging for links, people will link naturally if the content is good

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• Get your posts submitted to some blog carnivals

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• Leave at least 10 comments every day on related blogs

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• Create some creative posts instead of recycling content

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• Participate in forums that cover your niche

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Andrea Moore asks:

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\nI run a relatively new (started May, 2007) blogspot blog that is starting to get a decent amount of traffic and links. Recently I’ve been thinking about transferring it to a WordPress blog with its own domain. My question is: what problems and issues can I anticipate in this transition, and what are the ideal ways to minimize its ill effects? If I buy an expiring domain with PR and links, will that help?

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Let me begin with your latest question. Buying an expiring domain with PR and backlinks is always a positive thing. Another benefit from that might be the age of the domain, which is also used by search engines to determine trust.

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As far as transferring your blog to WordPress goes, I would do it as soon as possible. You will lose some traffic and some backlinks along the way, but it is definitely worth it. And the sooner you do it the fewer things you will lose.

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Make sure to contact authority sites that were linking to you and ask them to kindly update their links, and switch the source of your RSS feed in the case you use Feedburner.

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You can also read an article titled “Moving from Blogger to WordPress: Ideal Practices” that contains a detailed step-by-step guide for the transfer.

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Bitten asks:

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What would you state to a person whose native language isn’t English but he/she wants to begin an English blog (because of bigger traffic)?

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If your writing skills in English are good I would say go for it. I needed to make that same decision when I was starting out, and I decided to go with English due to the larger audience.

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Notice, however, that at the very minimum you should be able to write clearly and without spelling or grammatical mistakes. Sure, we all make typos once in a while, but there are some blogs out there that you can’t even follow the reasoning of the author.

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If your writing skills are not so good, therefore, I would go with a blog in your native language. Despite reaching a smaller audience, you’ll be facing less competition and you will learn the corner stones nonetheless. You can always create an English website in the future when you are more experienced and when you feel more confident about writing in English.

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Mike asks:

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What if you have a “non” web savvy market. I don’t think they get the whole RSS thing. I can send a lot of visitors to a new blog post, but the RSS doesn’t go up. Any suggestions?

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If your audience is not web-savvy, there are two main things that you can do to increase the number of subscribers.

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First of of all you can try to explain to them what is RSS. Add a “What is RSS?” link close the the RSS icon, and point it to a page where you briefly explain what is RSS and how they can subscribe to your blog using a feed reader.

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The second thing you can is to offer email subscriptions. Feedburner makes it really simple to crate an RSS to email service. After setting this up you can place a subscription form on your blog where readers just need to put their email and click on the “Subscribe” button.

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Scott asks:

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I have put together a blog which has great content in my niche and I am looking to spend $ on advertising. This includes adwords, stumbleupon, msn, blogads, etc. I read your post about “7 ways to market your blog” and likely will end up doing most or all of them this month.

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I am wondering if you have any other avenues for me to explore – basically at this point I am looking to test as many possible avenues as possible for 1-2 months then figure out what works best and optimize those.

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Well, on the article you mentioned I covered pretty much all the “proven” promotional techniques. If you are looking for even more methods to promote your site, here are a few suggestions.

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You could try Facebook flyers. Basically for $10 you can send 5,000 flyers to Facebook users. Supposedly you can target them, so you should be able to select groups that are related to your site. I have not tested it personally, so I am not sure about the results.

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Secondly, you could also try sponsoring the development of a WordPress theme or plugin. Creating popular themes or plugins can be very good for your marketing strategy, since they will bring traffic, awareness and links.

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Finally, you could also create a competition or a contest on your site. Looks like you have a good budget to work with, so creating a competition with interesting prizes is definitely something that would create buzz on your site.

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