Building blog traffic is tricky business. Whether you’re a pre-teen Hannah Montana blogger in Wichita or a multinational corporation, there is no magic formula to drive readers to your site. The road to blogging success, as with most success in the social media universe, is paved with good content, good contacts and hard work. In this spirit, I offer you some tips I’ve gathered to help you down the road. These suggestions, while mainly geared toward organizations, should apply to individual bloggers as well:

  • Push out all new blog posts using TwitterFeed. If you are an individual, you can sign up for the service with your Twitter username. If you are a blogger for an organization, you will need to select a username for the blog. Try to select a name that’s as close to the name of your organization or blog as possible. Once you’ve done that, I recommend searching Twitter for all positive posts related to your organization and “following” the users who made them. Most likely these users will follow you back and receive your blog updates.
  • If your blog has multiple contributors, all should have their own Twitter accounts. Twitter usernames should be posted with any other contact information included in your blogger profile. Conversely, your blog URL should be posted in your Twitter profile.
  • The more you post to your blog, the more relevant it becomes to the search engines, so the more active you can be, the better.
  • Write posts that encourage feedback, whether by posting a question or soliciting readers for ideas.
  • Similarly, bloggers should comment on other blogs almost as often as they post. These comments will also boost traffic to your blog, as well as foster goodwill with fellow bloggers. You should also try respond to comments made to your own posts to build those relationships.
  • A provocatively titled post doesn’t hurt either.
  • Post a blurb about particularly compelling posts post and the blog to relevant Facebook and LinkedIn groups dedicated to your organization. Include the blog’s Twitter username as well.
  • Include your blog’s URL in your e-mail signatures, in any organization-related online interaction you have (on Facebook, LinkedIn, message boards, etc.), on your business cards, on postcards to hand out at trade shows… These actions are pretty simplistic, but can be really effective at getting the word out.
  • Link to as many relevant blogs as possible in your blogroll. The more blogs you link to, the better your traffic. Just be sure to be thoughtful about these links, to ensure you get the sort of traffic you want.
  • Submit your blog to Technorati using their “ping” service and become a member [From Technorati's site: As a member you can claim your blogs, and create a personal Technorati profile, and readers from around the web will be able to find what you've written.]
  • You can also submit to Google Blog Search via a similar, albeit more complicated, service.
  • Create a Flickr account to host all images posted to your blog. Include an anchor text link in the image description that takes users back to the original post where the image was included.
  • Create a social media release to promote any particularly “newsworthy”/shareable posts i.e., “10 Tips for Getting People to Read Your Blog,” or “How to Lose 20 Pounds a Week by Eating Cheese and French Fries.”
  • If you or any of the your contributing bloggers are active Digg/Reddit users, I would recommend submitting the above-mentioned “newsworthy”/shareable posts to these sites. Again, this is if, and only if these bloggers are active users of these sites and submit other users posts and stories on a regular basis – not just their own posts. This is a huge no-no and will be viewed as spam or worse (see Gonzo’s post on unethical Digg practices.)

Have tips of your own to share? Please leave them in the comments. We need traffic too. ;)