Here are the things I've done to get my blog up and running:
1 - I post 2-3 posts/day of solid content (and one picture of the day for fun) on mostly business topics but also other topics that interest me. Some of the articles are mine but at this point, many are from free article sites. This will continue for a while until I have more time to focus on my blog.
2 - I Digg and Stumble every post I make. Build up your social network on both to increase traffic. Social media sites are huge. I had one of my articles from yesterday get picked up on Mixx (which I've never even heard of) and I'm currently the 2nd most popular story on their site - lots of traffic!
3 - Comment on other people's blogs, particularly big-name bloggers. Try to get in early on the comments and, if you have a strong opinion about what they posted, blog about it and link back to their story. I commented on a Dosh Dosh post the other day and I was the #4 commentator. (Read his post about commenting first) Then I blogged about it which put a link to my post at the bottom of his post. I've gotten lots of great traffic from that and the same story is the one that was picked up on mixx.com.
4 - Participate in Blog Carnivals - like the one I host. It's a GREAT way to build backlinks and get your blog viewed by a lot of different people who might never have found you otherwise. The first carnival had 9 posts was viewed about 90 times (directly and double that indirectly) and had over 50 click-outs to the various articles. This week's carnival is almost twice as big so I expect results to mirror that.
There are hundreds of carnivals out there on just about any topic you could imagine. Go to blogcarnival.com to see a list. Yesterday I submitted articles to about 30 carnivals. if even half of them pick up the article that gives me 15 back-links and who knows how much traffic.
It has taken a *lot* of time, but it's worth it. In the approx 2 weeks I've had my blog up I've averaged about 80 visitors/day and more than double that in page hits. I've also gotten 3 potential client leads. I've had about 8 of my posts linked back on various websites and have gotten quite a few comments. I also show up in both Yahoo and Google searches.
A good blog is SO worth it. One thing to remember is to set up your blog for permalinks. It helps a lot with
SEO optimization. This is when the post title says:
http://amvirtualassistant.com/blog/2...nival-issue-2/ not
http://amvirtualassistant.com/blog/p=09 or something like that.
Good luck and let me know if you need clarification on anything.
How do you launch a great blog?
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