I think they’ll be helpful for my fellow freshmen and maybe even you senior bloggers. In keeping with the sharing spirit, I was wondering if anyone else out there had any gems of promotion wisdom they’d like to share? I’m here to learn!
Here are Catherine’s tips (her site is http://albioncooks.blogspot.com/):
1. Get your food blog listed on Food Porn Watch (on my sidebar underMore Food Links), which lists your site (almost) every time youupdate it. This is a good way to get traffic and for people to findyour blog.
2. Leave comments on all the food blogs you like and people will findyou that way (and its fun to get conversations going etc).
3. Get Site Meter, a free traffic service so you know how many peopleare visiting. (People rarely leave comments so that's no guideline)
4.Get listed under Food and Drink on BlogTop Sites (Little buttonlink above my Save the Internet Button on sidebar).
5. Enter competitions and events - See "Is My Blog Burning?" linkunder my Other Food Links section.
6. Set up RSS Feed under Feedburner so people can subscribe to yourfeed.
Here are three of my own:
1. Using Flickr in conjunction with your blog gives visitors another entry point.
2. This one may sound obvious – but once your blog is launched, email everyone you know and tell them about it (and get them to tell everyone they know!) I was pleasantly surprised to get interest from people I never expected.
3. In addition to Feedburner’s email service, I put some widgets on my site that automatically add my feed to popular feed readers like Bloglines, Newsgator, etc.
Would love to hear what everyone else has to say on this topic. Thanks for the warm welcome!
This Post was written by Vanessa from vanesscipes
8 comments:
thanks for all the tips
this is a geat post for people starting out on a food blogging adventure
I would also add that checking technorati to see who links to you helps with building community because then you can respond by paying a visit to the blog that kinked to you.
I would also add that IMBB et al are not really competitions, more community sharing events that bring people together over a shared recipe theme, although some are actually competitive like Paper Chef and DMBLGIT
Another issue is increasing your visibility in google and other engine searches (I get the majority of my visitors that way), but that is a subject for a whole other post and i don't really have time to do that right now.
linked not kinked, duh!
Sam is right about learning how google works If you're trying to build up blog traffic, one of the most important things to learn about is search engine optimization. I wish I had know a lot more about this a lot earlier, and I still wish I knew more. I'd google that term and read everything you can about it.
FWIW - NEVER pay anyone to help you with Search engine optimization (SEO). First, 99% likely it's a scam. Second many here will help you for free.
SEO tip #1 - make your titles use the words that accurately describe the blog entry most effectively - and use them all.
[note - for anyone that goes and looks - I do not practice what I preach - but then, I don't care about traffic - however, in my day job I know a lot about SEO]
so if this comment were a blog entry it would be titled something like 'use keywords effectively in titles to maximize search engine optimization (SEO)'
but better than all SEO is to write interestingly and accessibly and often. I like to think I can do the first, I can sometimes do the second but I know I don't do the last...
I'd like to hear tips about the search engine stuff. And a question, does using technorati tags on posts produce a notable difference in traffic?
catherine - technorati tags give you negligible traffic. techorati is most useful for showing your incoming links
Sam - thanks! I hadn't noticed much of a difference and am rather lazy/forgetful about adding the links. I agree that technorati is very good for checking links.
Thanks those were great suggestions!
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