Let me jump right into it. You now have a fully functioning blog if you took the time and followed the advice that I detailed in my last How To Blog guide. Now that you have a blog (and maybe even a few users), you may be wondering how to increase your readership.

I have already outlined most everything you need to know in my post on building traffic, but there are a few tips that will get you through those rainy days.

Social Bookmarking

Tip: Stumble Upon is a great source for free traffic, find your best material and stumble it. If you don’t know what stumble upon is, read this.

Your best bet when it comes to social bookmarking are the big three, Digg, Stumble Upon and Reddit. Chances are most all of your posts will never make it to the front page, but don’t let that discourage you. Simply submitting these posts will likely get you some traffic.

To maximize your odds of getting any particular article picked up by a social bookmarking site, make sure that you do the following:

1. Submit using a catchy (but appropriate title).

2. Only submit your best content, containing original, interesting material.
3. Try to submit to categories that are most appropriate for your content.

Writing

Tip: Add then Ultimate Tag Warrior plugin to and tags make your site Technorati friendly.

In order to submit anything, anywhere you need content. I’ll bet you an iPod you think that you know everything there is to writing for a blog. Chances are, if you think it has anything to do with traditional journalism you are pretty solidly mistaken.

The most important points when writing a blog post is to understand what purpose you are writing for at the moment. Posts come in three flavor.

• Sticky
• Summary
• Throw Away

Sticky posts, or “Authority Posts” are the cream of the crop, “this is why you are here” type of posts. For the more pedantic among you here is a description I wrote up a while ago:

These types of post are what they call “link bait”. By providing original content with the “feel” of true authority, it is as likely as not that your articles will naturally be picked up by those searching for the information that you are writing about. The principle is that most blog posts are little more the rehashing of another people’s material, if you can provide original content (or at least good content around a subject that has not been covered in depth) you are better able to draw links organically. Also, since you are writing a large body of text, this gives you more room to do good SEO, internally link to other content and promote the software.

The idea is that you need to understand that as far as your subject of interest is concerned, you should position yourself as the warm, glowing center of that universe. Where possible, produce content that shows you know what you are talking about. This is the content that users are going to come back for and thus you should put most of your time and effort into ensuring it is as good as possible.

Summary Posts

This is a rehashing of events. This will be the mainstay of you content unless you have a topic that doesn’t generate news, or you happen to have the type of insider connections necessary to generate original scoops. You really should not be afraid of writing summary posts. What you should do, where possible is to elaborate on these posts as best you can.

If you are talking about a startup, don’t just rehash what everyone else is saying — give the company a look, try out their product and then write a article with everything that you have learned independently in mind. Where you once basically had a copy and paste piece, you now have what will pass for a piece of unique content.

Tip: Techmeme.com and sites like it, that aggregate the most “talked about” subjects of the day are good sources for inspiration if your niche allows for it.

Throw Away Posts

These are video clips, pictures and other detritus that you use when you honestly have nothing better to write about. While it is better to write something than nothing at all, you should try to limit these. Throw away posts are like sweets, they seem great in the short run but if you rely too heavily on them they can be a real toothache.

General Traffic Building

No, I’m not going to rehash the techniques you can find anywhere else on the internet — here tips that I picked up that might actually prove useful.

Use the top sites in your niche. Find the top blogs in your niche and comment, comment, comment. If you provide constructive comments you can help to draw people to check out your own site. Remember, these are people who are already interested in your niche — they just need a push in the right direction.

Always follow up. Did someone new come to your site? Are you using Blog Catalog or MyBlogLog? If you answer yes to both of these question, then you should always, always be following up with your new users. If you don’t care about your readers then there is really no reason for you to be blogging. Send them messages, send them emails, visit their sites — it’s honestly the least you can do.

Stay focused. Above all else, stay focused on your subject. If you write a blog about Technology, try to avoid unnecessarily delving into your personal life (unless that’s a part of your blogs allure).

And The Most Important Point…

Here at How To Split An Atom I don’t write about SEO too often, nor do a particularly care about the real alchemy behind it (you should do what you can, but don’t stress over every outbound link). What I do know is that if you keep writing, people will keep coming back to your site. The most popular blogs are always those where the content is constantly being updated.

Look at it from the standpoint of the readers. Are you more likely to revisit a site if you know that you’ll have something new each day or one where you never know what you’ll find?

You don’t have to write all day long if your schedule does not allow. What you should do is to write consistently. Staying consistent is the best way to keep your audience happy.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Lets see, without getting into too much detail I’ve held your hand through he process of creating a blog, now you know how to write for a blog. Next time we meet, we’ll go over how to at least cover your server expenses through blogging.

Previous Article: How To Blog, Part One