Over at
Living Room, Darren is
running an excellent series of articles about blogging. He’s asked for
contributions, to which he can link. So here, from my own experiences are a
few tips on how to get noticed:
Tell
people that you’ve arrived. After I’d had my site running for a couple of
weeks I sent out several dozen emails to other bloggers, titled “New Kid
on the Blog”, asking if they might give me a mention. I guess about a
third did, including Dodgeblog,
who gave me a nice plug, without even checking out my site. Later, having
visited my site, he posted this:
He is an
evangelical/happy clappy Christian, something he failed to mention in his
email to me. That'll learn me to post a link just for being asked! Proceed
at your own risk, you have been warned. Me, I am listening to some Therion
to help me get over following the link, going to read some Cthulhu as well.
I wonder if in your face evangelicals ever realised how many Christians
(lapsed) they turn off by their obnoxious tactics?
Oops.
Tell people when you
write something about them. Take up issues that are current in the
blogosphere, write about them, and then quickly email others who are
writing about the same issue, to alert them to your comments. If you have
something interesting to say you’ll find that other bloggers will be quick
to link to you. In fact, soon you’ll find bloggers emailing YOU to tell
you about their posts, and hoping for a link from you.
Post comments in the
Comments section of other people’s blogs. Reply to what people say in your
own Comments section, and even email them personally to thank them for
their comments.
Email fellow
bloggers and ask them their views on a particular issue, and then write a
round-up article of what they tell you. My own blog took off after I wrote
an article on the
phenomenon of Christian blogging, based on a short list of questions I
sent to a couple of dozen Christian bloggers. It got me lots of links (and
it didn’t hurt that
Instapundit
was one of those).
But, most
importantly, you must have something to say, be able to say it well, and
keep your blog fresh.
