blog promotion/digg me up del.icio.us ma.gnolias
I touched upon the subject in a previous article, but promotion on the web is a fickle thing. If you have a blog you need people to notice you, which can be a tough job when there's 30.000 other people with similarly themed blogs. There are numerous ways to attract attention, but in a virtual world where spam is a rampant problem, what's the best way to deal with promotion without needlessly spamming other people? A question I asked myself when I started up my blog, so I thought it'd be nice to at least explain my ethical views on this subject.
The first thing one has to figure out for himself is the boundary between genuine promotion and spam. You'll find many articles on the web about blog promotion, but some of the methods listed don't differ (much) from ordinary spam methods. So when I started my blog, I vowed to always put content as my first priority and go from there.
use other blogs
A popular method to get noticed is to make use of other blogs. Still, there are various ways to approach this.
One thing I thoroughly dislike is the use of trackback links within the comment section. It breaks the flow of the comments, it's usually pretty much unreadable for ordinary humans and it's nothing more than ordinary (and intrusive) spam to me. I've seen some blogs where they put the trackback links in a separate section, which a good evolution if you ask me.
Another way of getting noticed on another one's blog is to post related articles in the comment section. Sometimes this is appropriate, sometimes not. If the article you're posting answers the bloggers question I guess it's pretty fair to do so, if it's just a similarly themed article I suppose it doesn't really ascend the level of ordinary spam. The question you should ask yourself is whether the readers of the blog will find something extra in your article that you can't express in a little post. If so, I think the link is warranted.
One final method is to add a link to your blog on your name in the comments (a standard feature on almost every blog). As this is intended for personal promotion, this is probably the least intruding way of promotion.
use others
You can also use others to promote your blog. A method I like, as it is often related to the value of your own content. There are feeds and newsletters out there that give a nice recap of the most interesting articles of the last week or month. Submit your articles to such recaps and if they're good enough they'll be included. You reach an interested audience this way, supposing you've written something that's actually worthwhile.
The nice thing about this method is that you're not really promoting your blog, you're trying to get content to interested parties. The fact that they'll notice your blog is actually an afterthought in this process, but of course it's still good promotion.
use web 2.0
And then, of course, there's 2.0. If you want lots of exposure, you should make sure you get noticed on del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, digg, technorati, stumbleupon and I dunno what other social tools are hot these days.
As you can see, none of these are featured on my blog so you can guess my stance on these tools/sites. I don't mind being submitted to these sites, but of course the question is how to get yourself submitted. Many people opt to litter their blogs with a range of ugly icons somewhere close to the article. This of course makes it easy for people to submit your article to one of these sites, but at the same time it upsets the balance between worth and effort I talked about before.
I wonder if content is worth submitting when people don't bother submitting it if the little button isn't there. If it's too much hassle to make that little extra effort, what does that tell you about the "worth" of submitting it. For the time being, I believe that people will submit it anyway if they think it's worth it. I know I won't get as many hits this way, but at least it gives me a clear conscience. And I can ditch the ugly row of icons, which is a serious plus.
use or abuse
In the end it all boils down to one thing. How far are you willing to go to promote your blog. As long as you think your methods are fair, I guess there really aren't any boundaries. Just remember that people might value your image based on your methods of promotion.
The web is a very democratic place when it comes to popularity... I believe that "if you build it, they will come". All you need to do is write better content than the rest. It will get noticed.
Maybe the problem is "how long are you willing to spend effort on writing good articles for the 50 or so visitors that frequent the blog..."
True to some extent. The question is of course, do you want "them" to come, or do you want "more of them" to come :)
And why write for 50 people if 1000 are interested in what you are writing? I don't think promotion is bad, people who don't want to read what you write will stay away but the people who are interested might come quicker.
But in the end, it all boils down to writing good content (and a little bit of luck).
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