Top 7 Blogging Tips - Developing a Readership

You've finally created a blog and you've made your first post. Now how do you get people to actually read what you're blogging about?

Here are some tips on promoting your blog.

1. Quality Content - Interesting content will keep your readership returning. Update your blog regularly.

Googlebot, which is Google's web-crawling robot loves content. The more you update your blog, the more frequent the search engine spiders will return to it.

2. Publish an RSS/Atom/XML feed. If you're using Blogger, you can turn on RSS feed by clicking on settings in your dashboard and then clicking on site feed and make sure that your settings are set to yes.

3. Involve yourself in commenting on other blogs. You can gain a loyal readership just by offering feedback to your fellow bloggers. The comment feature allows you to add a link back to your blog as well.

4. Submit your blog to directories.

Submit your blog's url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex.

5. If you're using blogging software such as Blogger, there is an option to notify the central blog update services (such as weblogs.com) whenever you've made a new entry to your blog. Make sure that this option is turned on! In blogger, click on publish in your dashboard and make sure that your settings are set to yes under notify weblogs. Alternatively, you can go to ping-o-matic.com and send out a ping each time you update your blog. This lets everyone know that you've just updated your blog.

6. Carefully choose your subject titles, taking into consideration what other internet users may be searching for.

Use keywords in your title. I suggest subscribing to Word Tracker. Their report of the most popular searches is published each Tuesday and distributed to over 30,000 subscribers.

Technorati.com , is a blog search engine that also lists the top search words. The more targeted your keywords are, the greater your return in search engines will be.

7. Link to other blogs. Use services like blogrolling, which is similar to linking. Blogrolling allows you to maintain an updated list of your favorite blogs. But, don't build a long blog roll of sites that you have no intention of returning to. There is nothing more annoying then visiting a blog that has a humongous blogroll.