Going Public

If I write it, will they come?
You've set up your blog. You've started posting entries. There's "content" and "value" for the "customers" and it's really interesting and mom keeps saying it's really really good except she wasn't sure what the reference to polymorphic functions in a non-dynamic language actually meant. She even added a comment saying "I read every entry Joe! Don't forget to call grandma for her birthday next week. Love! Mom". You really should explain to her the difference between blog comments and email.

But what about other people? How do you get other people to read your blog? How do you even know if other people are reading it?

Welcome to the world of marketing. You now need to reach your target audience or make sure they can find you easily. There are a number of techniques for doing so.

First of all, blogs are about community. Word of mouth is one of the best ways to get readers. Friends bring friends over. The problem you have is starting the process. If you target a specific group with your blog, like I did, sending them email saying "new blog, read it, pop quiz on Monday" is a good way to get them to come take a look. Most people will at least press the link if they know who you are. Whether or not they'll return to read it in the future is a separate issue. You might need to send a few such emails though that does tend to get annoying. Make sure your blog can easily be subscribed to (e.g. using the chicklets I desribed in a previous posting).

Next, make sure your blog can be found. If you've noticed the technorati keywords I've added to this and previous entries, they serve a double function. They let users quickly find other blogs with similar keywords, but they also let technorati know which keywords to associate with this post. Instead of the search engine having to figure out from the text what your blog is about, you can help it out and tell it how to classify it. Once you have the keywords in place, you should let technorati know there's an entry it should look at. This is called "pinging". Some blog engines (like webroller, used on this site) do so automatically whenever you post a new entry. Just go into the preferences and turn on pings to the sites you want to notify.

Alternatively, use a free service like pingomatic to notify a group of blog tracking sites. Pingomatic will create a URL you can use to automatically let all these sites know whenever you have a new entry.

But one of the best ways to get people to read your blog is to read other's blogs and comment on them. Communities are built on members. By finding other blogs that are related to your main topic and commenting on them, you create interest for other readers. Leave a link to your blog on the other site and people will click on it to come by. You can even have some interesting discussions generated that way.

There's an even better way, linking blogs and comments, but that will have to wait for another post which Stuart volunteered to do.

Eran Davidov

Technorati Tags:  mom,  community,  technorati,  blogs,  comments,  pings,  Going Public
Del.icio.us Tags:  mom,  community,  technorati,  blogs,  comments,  pings,  Going Public

Upcoming posts:

• Measuring readership
  
• Stuart's guest post - Back scratching: Trackback links
• Shai's guest post - Dealing with inflammatory bloggers and comments
• Yael's guest post - topic undefined
• Amichai's guest post - Folksonomy and community based sites
• Interviews with open source developers
  

If you have something to say about going public and interacting in the open world, I'm still looking for volunteers.