The problem with this scenario is that in most cases the reputable blog networks will only allow those who are already pretty well know in their niche to guest post. Because of this you either have to look for a lesser known blog network that is more lenient in their guest poster criteria, or join huge networks that accepts blog posts from all their members but only chooses to move up a few (Think SEOmoz’s YouMoz section).

Whichever kind of blog network you decide to latch on, what your primary concern should be that the blog network you join is in the niche you specialize in or are interested in. Remember, if your goal is personal brand building it is more than the links that goes with blog networks that you are after. It won’t do you any good to guest post in blogs where your lack of expertise will shine a bad light on you. Not only that, but it’ll be a waste of your time because the audience is not your target audience anyway.

Image via TechTipsforCatholics

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The problem in many cases is that these blogs are just not accessible or searchable. Let’s face it, even if your blog does get indexed in Google, what are your chances of making it to the top search results as a new blog? Unless you already have a very wide online circle, there’s no way that you’ll get that much traffic from the major search engines, at least until your blog gets older and starts to rank better. In the meantime, you’re still left with the problem of growing your readership in as little time as possible.

One way to help get more traffic to come to your blog is by taking advantage of niche search engines. Instead of having to compete with countless sites on mainstream search engines like Google, targeting the users of niche search engines will automatically narrow down the competition.

A good niche search engine for blogs you might want to check out is the Blog Search Engine. The Blog Search Engine is an easy way to promote your blog without having to worry about rankings and SEO. All you need to do is submit your blog details and pay the $14.99, which will get you a review from Blog Search Engine aside from getting listed on the index. Once you get the confirmation email containing your username and password for the search engine, you will also have the option of upgrading your package to get more links from other blog sites, and even have your banner featured on Blog Search Engine.

Just remember, once you start getting visitors to your site from search engines, it is your job to keep them; so while I urge you to work on the accessibility of your blog, I can’t emphasise enough the importance of having relevant and interesting content that will keep your visitors coming back.

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Even if you have a great product, you have to find ways to cut through the noise to get their attention, and even then, most bloggers are very apprehensive due to the constant battle they need to participate in against spam.

Network

The first piece of advice that just about anyone gets when it comes to promoting anything is to network, but if you are new, or even a reasonably well known person online with a new product to talk about, it can be very difficult to network.

Some might think that I had an easy time promoting PicApp thanks to the contacts I made while blogging full time, but you would be wrong. Most of the people I know aren’t really able to help because their blogs don’t fall within the niches that can really use or discuss PicApp, and so while I did have some help from friends, much of what I had to do was from scratch.

Find Thought Leaders
One of the best things that I have done in my attempts to get people to talk about what I am doing is to focus in on the thought leaders. They might not run the most popular blogs, but they sway the opinion of a group of people, and that is very valuable in building any brand.

To find them, go to blog directories, blog search engines, and top blog lists and look for the top blogs in the niche you want to gain exposure in. For the longest time, I contacted some people that I know well listed higher up in the 45n5.com/top100 list, as they are other blogs in the same niche as this one, and I thought I would have a better chance of them recognizing me, and as such, being easier to approach.

Ask, Don’t Tell
When starting out networking with people, if you want them to look at something, make sure you write in a passive tone, and ask them, rather than telling them. If you write your e-mail, instant message, twitter, or other digital message in a way that doesn’t sound friendly, happy, and interested in their benefit first, then most likely your correspondence will hit their trash bin.

Don’t Spam
Keep track of who you contact, and don’t contact them again. If they didn’t respond, they probably weren’t interested. If you continually contact them, you will just be seen as another spammer, and bloggers will rightfully call you on that in their blog, making you and whatever you are trying to get attention for look bad.

Don’t Pressure
Remember, even if you have the best product in the world, you need their help more than they need whatever it is you want to talk to them about. Bloggers don’t like to feel pressured into anything, and their spam defenses go on overdrive when there is an inkling of urgency or pressure.

Your communications should respect their time, their focus, and their busy schedule. If they are unable to participate, you shouldn’t be making them feel like it would be a mistake, but instead be understanding.

Make Friends

The biggest help that I received early on was from my friends. Even people who ran blogs outside the normal target audience of the PicApp service took up a call to arms for me. Some of them did it out of kindness and friendship, while others I traded with. I used my skills in writing, WordPress, and other things I know to barter with some of my friends, making it more of a mutual deal, rather than me just “using” them.

Nothing Wrong Reciprocation
Some people that I have talked to think that it is kind of rude that people only do things for others when they know they will get something in return, but this helps takes care of those in society who continually leech off the backs of others for their own needs.

To do something helpful for a friend may free up the time they need to do something for you, and it becomes mutually beneficial, especially when they have skills or resources you are lacking and vice versa.

Work Together Towards Mutual Goals
Pretty much anyone publishing content online has a goal. It might be a small one or a very large one, but if you can find ways to work together with friends towards a mutual goal, sometimes that is the sweetest collaborations of all.

I have worked with a friend before on a link bait that would highlight his site, but was published on my site. This gained me traffic, links and exposure, of which was then filtered through to him. It was a great way to help each other out and worked out beautifully.

Attend Events

There are so many conferences and events for pretty much any niche or topic, and participating in one way or another can really drive eyeballs to the work you are trying to do. You don’t have to be a big sponsor to have events pay off dividends in building a brand, but you do need to have some sort of presence at an event to make an impact.

Research Events
It can be really intimidating going to events for the first time, as every event is different. Each conference and event that I have attended has a different dynamic, audience, and sets of groups. Navigating these can become much easier with a little preplanning.

Will you need to bring business material, marketing handouts, technical information, or just some business cards, pens and paper, as well as a smile and a firm handshake? Bring the wrong things and you will be unable to market yourself or your products effectively.

Ask Bloggers in Similar Niches What They are Attending
One issue I realized early on is that there are more events and conferences than you could ever possibly know about, and they aren’t always promoted well, and so asking friends, network connections or even competition which events they are attending will help you build a list of events you might want to attend.

I can’t even list the number of conferences I have found out about thanks to word of mouth through my network connections, and most of them were only told to me once I specifically asked what was available or what they were planning on attending.

Contact Interesting Attendees and Schedule Meetings
To make the most of each and every event you want to attend, make sure to find out the guest list, and try to schedule a few meetings. There will be lots of networking between sessions, in hallways, and afterwards, but it can be hard to get two words in sometimes unless you set some time aside. I make sure to try to do this in a casual way with friends and network connections, but it is something I am still working on myself.

Making sure to set some time aside where the focus is completely on what you wanted to discuss can mean the difference between a memorable meeting and a quick in-the-hall discussion.

Ask

If you don’t ask people, you’ll never open up the possibility that they will say “yes”. There are many bloggers who I barely had a relationship with that I asked to look over PicApp and provide me feedback. Some decided to do it privately via e-mail, and others published about it on their blog. Both responses were very helpful, and were a big part of the upcoming advances in the PicApp platform.

If I hadn’t asked them, then I would not have had the information that PicApp needed and wouldn’t have been as effective in my job.

It never really hurts to ask, as the worst thing they can say or do is nothing. Even negative press through contacting people you don’t know well can be handled, and might point out things that friends and network contacts were too polite to say.

Conclusion

Getting people to talk about PicApp and the great things they are doing is definitely much harder than coming up with blog posts ever was, and while I think it is only getting harder and harder to stand out from the noise and get messages out their to the people and audiences you hope to inspire and connect with, I still believe that with patience, persistence, and planning, anyone can get their message heard.

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Blogging teaches a variety of talents that can be used outside of just blogging, and Deb lives that every day as the Community Manager for BlogTalkRadio. You might know Deb from her famous site Freelance Writing Jobs where she and her friends hand out massive amounts of great advice for freelance writers and bloggers alike.

Her e-book, Beyond Blogging: Using Your Blogging Skills for Bigger and Better Things, is twenty three pages long and comes in at just under ten dollars. An extreme value if I have ever seen one.

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It’s a great list and I would have to commend the guest blogger for coming up with such list. Going through the 100 tips for promoting a new blog though might be too much a task, so I picked up 10 of this tips which I’ve proven to work based on my recent experience with my new blog on ebooks and ereaders, as well as with my other blogging activities.

So, here goes 10 blog promotion tips that actually work:

1. Write a list of over 100+ resources or ideas – You might think 100+ resources list type of post is daunting and requires too much hard work, why can it be just 10+, 20+, or 30+? Do readers actually go through that 100 items?  Probably not. But 10+ list types are very common today. So if  you have a new blog and you want your list post to stand out, try to make the number of items up to 100+ or even more. You’ll get more attention by doing so and will improve your chances of getting at the front page of Digg.

2. Create a Facebook Fan Page – Nevermind what people say about creating a fan page for blogs. Go ahead and create your own Facebook page. It’s a free world, nobody is stopping you from doing so. But make sure that when you’ve created the Facebook fan page that you promote it properly on your Facebook profile so that your Facebook friends will actually know about it. Then let the power of word-of-mouth advertising do it’s wonders.

3. Connect with Other Bloggers – It doesn’t matter how you do this task. You can connect with bloggers through so many social media ways – follow bloggers on Twitter, Connect with them on Facebook,  Add their site to your Blogroll, etc. The thing is, this old-age habit still works and help you promote your new blog.

4.Search Engine Optimization – Another old trick that still works, no matter what people say that this trick may no longer anymore. The fact is SEO is still important if you want to promote your new blog.

5. ReTweet, ReTweet and ReTweet your Blog Posts – Spammy or not ReTweeting your individual blog posts is still the best way of promoting your new blog. Based on my recent experience with my new blog, this trick actually can make wonders in making your blog known. It helped one of my blog posts got into the Techmeme index which resulted in instant increase in page views – which in turn game me a good AdSense earnings. All in just a couple of days.

5+1. Sit back, relax and wait for the fruits of your labor to reap its rewards. If you are not satisfied with the rewards you’ve gained, go back to step 1 to 5 and find other tips from the DBT posts.

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But of course, you should still promote your blog posts on both your Twitter account and Facebook updates and other social media/sharing sites to get people to read your blog posts. And if you’re confident that you have made a compelling blog posts, hopefully readers will ReTweet your posts using the “ReTweet button.

So here, we have some of the WordPress Plugins that lets you easily add the “ReTweet This” button to your blog. All these plugins are proven to work on the latest vesion of WordPress.TweetMeme Button – shows a live count of the number of times your webpage or blog post has been tweeted

Easy ReTweet - this is the plugin I’m using for my new blog. It let’s you add retweet or Tweet this buttons for your WordPress posts, together with the retweet count. You can activate this plugin automatically or manually if you want to do some customization to make the ReTweet button fit your blog’s overall design.

BigTweet Button - allows you blog readers to easily tweet about your posts without leaving your blog. It features three button sizes in blue theme that you can choose to implement on your blog. The Plugin uses Bit.ly for URL shortening.

Topsy Widgets – this plugin puts a button on your blog posts that shows how many times it has been retweeted. It also allows your visitors to retweet your posts easily. What’s good about this ReTweet plugin is that it can turn tweets into blog comments.

ReTweet.com button – this is the official button plugin of ReTweet.com. It features full admin options, hide buttons on home page, pages, posts etc, option to display the retweet button at top or bottom, and various button sizes.

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My first thought is how great it is to see the list grow, but also, it makes me wonder how many high quality blogs about blogging are out there? I guess we will see as more blogs continue to submit their sites to be ranked.

Also, for those that have feedback about the Uber Blogs list, please head on over to my contact page, and let me know what you think, or leave a comment on any of the posts about the list.

If you want to add your blog about blogging to the Uber Blog list, just head on over to the list, scroll to the bottom and fill out the form.

Please note: if you blog is not about blogging, writing online, blog management, blog networks, getting a blogging job, please don’t submit your site as it won’t be approved to be listed.

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Why is this important to me? Well, I was as high as seventh in the a top list, and now have dropped to tenth thanks to the continual fight I am having to try to increase my Alexa rank.

There are competing blogs in the list that have a much lower Alexa rank than me, with similar or lower monthly traffic. Could they be manipulating their rank in “bad” ways? I am not sure, but it sure is frustrating as having as many ranks as high as possible helps make it easier to sell advertising, despite Alexa not being considered the most accurate ranking system.

Are there any new techniques, since Alexa changed their data sources, relating to increasing your rank in a non-technology niche?

Related Blogs

• Related Blogs on alexa
• Google Trends Kills Alexa, Compete.com, and Quantcast.
• Alexa.com Website Rankings Updated!
• What is an Alexa Ranking, How Does It Affect You & How Do You …

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After realizing that getting one thousand listeners per episode wasn’t easy for him, nor any podcaster, I immediately wondered how well podcast advertising scales. Surely it deals with the same sliding CPM rates that blogs and other forms of advertising get, and so the higher the traffic, the less money for every thousand listens he’ll get.

So estimating a maximum audience of ten thousand plays per episode, four episodes a month, and three sponsors per episode still paying $10 CPM, he would only be making $1200 per month for what, in my mind, would be an outrageously popular show.

Seems like there aren’t really any super easy ways to make money online and that it always comes back to creating a large enough audience that you can sell something, be it services, products, or advertisements, but the audience required to make a full time living off the web, is probably only achievable by two percent of those willing to chase it.

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I will be speaking on a panel entitled, How to be More than a Blog: New Media Integration.

In today’s busy blogosphere, it’s not enough to have a blog. Using images, video, radio, podcasts and more can take a blog to a completely different level. In this session you’ll learn why bells and whistles are important and how easy it is to implement new media into your blog.

I am still hoping to speak on more panels if I am allowed, as I have an opinion on everything, even if it isn’t what most people would consider a correct opinion.

I will be in Las Vegas from 11pm on the 18th of September until 11pm on the 22nd of September. I would love to meet up with other attendees or readers in the area. I will be staying at the Riviera Hotel and Casino, but you’ll never find me in the casino part, so no worries on losing my shirt or anything.

This should be an amazing conference, and I am both very humbled and nervous to be speaking. Please let me know if you are going, what you think of Blog World Expo, even if you aren’t coming and if you can meet up with me while I am in town.

Also, if you are running a panel or conference, and would like me to speak, please feel free to contact me, as I would love to share what I have learned over the last three years.

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