So, you’ve jumped on the blog bandwagon. Great. Your new problem is “if you build it, will they come?”

Effectively marketing a blog requires many of the same steps as traditional website marketing, along with a few specific steps to blog marketing.

Step 1: Content is King
As with tradtional website marketing, you should keep in mind that content is the most important factor in marketing your blog. You need relevant content, unique content is best, that speaks to an audience.

Try and get some meat into your blog before you start actively registering and marketing it. By meat, we mean at least about a dozen articles of substance.

Step 2: Blog Tools
Do you have the right tools in place for your blog? RSS feeds, permalinks, trackbacks, discussions/comments, etc.? Make sure your blog is setup with at least these key features before continuing.

Step 3: Ping Away
Pinging is the process of submitting your blog to directory sites that index the blog postings and make them available via feeds and searches.

In blogging, ping is an XML-RPC-based push mechanism by which a weblog notifies a server that its content has been updated.

Some blog pinging services include:

Ping-O-Matic (http://pingomatic.com/)
Pingoat (http://pingoat.com/)
Weblogs (http://weblogs.com/)
Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/ping)

If you are using one of the more popular blogging tools (MojoBlog, WordPress, TypePad, etc.) you should be able to configure what blog ping services you automatically send your feed to.

Step 4: Register your Blog
Registering a blog is very similar to the process of registering a web page. Basically you identify directories and let them know your blog exists.

Here’s a few we utilize:

Google Blog Search (http://blogsearch.google.com/ping)
Blog Catalog (http://www.blogcatalog.com/)
Blog Hub (http://www.bloghub.com/)
Zimbio (http://www.zimbio.com/)
Blog Listing (http://www.bloglisting.net/)
Blog Top List (http://www.blogtoplist.com/)
BlogDup (http://www.blogdup.com/)
Blogarama (http://www.blogarama.com)

That’s pretty much it. Content, Tools, Ping and Register.

Expect to spend about an hour registering with the blog directories and setting up your blog ping services. But, once completed you can use your blogging software to automate future submissions and pings.

==========================
Article by Greg Banig Design & Marketing, http://www.gregbanigdesign.com