Top 5 Networking Blogging Strategy Tips

Top 5 Networking Blogging Strategy Tips

In most professional fields, who you know is at least as important as what you know. Blogging is no exception. If you have a good relationship with many bloggers and site owners they will be more likely to link to your posts, recommend your blog to other people and even help you sell a product or service. In other words: networking is key. In this chapter I will list how you can network effectively online.

1. Genuine Relationships

 The first principle to keep in mind is that networking is about building genuine relationships. This means that you should not approach people solely because you think they are popular, rich or important. Instead you should approach people who you respect and whose work you would be glad to recommend to others. Why? Because networking is about finding win-win relationships. Before people help you, you will need to help them. You must be willing to support and contribute to the people in your network.

2. Make a List 

I will try to highlight some practical tips that you can use for your networking now. The first one is to build a list with all the active blogs in your niche and possibly in related niches as well. The size of the list will obviously depend on your niche. If you blog about technology, you probably should have at least 200 blogs there. If you blog about orchids, on the other hand, probably it would have fewer than 20. The important thing is that you make your list as complete as possible, because this will be the starting point of your networking activities. Here are some tools and websites that you can use to find blogs inside specific niches:

• Technorat i 
•  AllTop 
•  BlogRank 
•  Wikio Top Blogs 
•  BlogCatalog

3. Introduce Yourself 

Once your list is ready, you want to introduce yourself to all those bloggers. Most blogs have either a contact form or an email address listed somewhere, so use either to get in touch. Here is how you could craft your message: 

•  Be straight forward about the fact that you are introducing yourself.
•   Mention that you blog in the same niche, and include the URL either in the message itself or in the signature. 
•  If you like the content of the blog, say so, and mention that you will link to it when possible. Here is a sample message to illustrate these points: 

Hi Mark, I am writing just to introduce myself. 

My name is Daniel, and I also have a blog in the ________ niche. The URL is ________________. 

I found your content very interesting, and I will definitely be recommending it to my readers. 

Best wishes, Daniel

4. Link When Possible 

A golden rule of networking is “give before you ask.” If you want bloggers and site owners to link to you, link to them first. I would recommend that you subscribe via RSS to all the blogs on your list. This will be useful both to keep updated with the trends in your niche and to spot good articles from those bloggers. When you come across one, write a post about it, add your opinion to the topic, and link to the source. You could also write an email to that blogger mentioning that you really liked his article, and that you decided to share it with your readers. 

Finally, keep in mind that linking out to quality and related content is always a good thing. Many bloggers fear that by linking out they might lose readers or Google PageRank. This is a myth. Your own readers will appreciate if you point them to useful content, and Google itself encourage webmasters to use external links to enrich their sites.

• Support in Other Ways Apart from linking often to people in your network, you should also try to support them in other ways. Examples include: 
• recommending their websites to other people, 
• endorsing their products or services, 
• suggesting them for an interview or award, 
• submitting and voting for their posts on social,bookmarking sites, and 
• sharing their posts on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. 

It is when you give without the expectation of getting something back that people start seeing you as a friend.

5. Share Your Best Content 

By now you should be asking yourself: “Well, I will do all that stuff for the people in my network, but when will I get something back?” If you try to help people genuinely as I mentioned, they will certainly notice it and be glad to return the favor. One thing that you can do to encourage this, however, is to share your best content with them. When you publish one of your killer articles, for example, you could send emails to the people in your network with a link to the article.

 It is important to not beg for a link back, but simply to mention that you believe he or she will like the article.

With this approach the person on the other side will be more likely to read the article, as there is no pressure involved. If he likes the content, there is a good chance that he will link to it. If he doesn't link, however, don't get frustrated or pissed off. Just keep working on your blog, and sooner or later that person will link to you.

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Top 8 Blogging Mistakes That Kill Traffic

There are some usability mistakes that bloggers end to make over and over again. We will list them here, so that you can use it as a checklist.

1.  No search box: Internet users resort to the search box whenever they need to find something specific. Some people even use search to navigate around websites. If you don't have a (visible) search box on your site, those users will get very frustrated. Everyone who is interested in content of your blog want the easy way to check out what you have. If you do not have a search box your visitor will be disappointed and he will leave your blog! Search box will provide your visitors to find what they are looking for in few seconds and they will read another post! That`s means you`ll got a constant reader and that is what is blogging about!
2.  No archives: It is essential to have a page where the visitor can browser through all your posts. Apart from improving the user experience, this page will also be healthy for your search engine optimization, as it works as a sitemap. Archives are "the most important part of your blog". Why? Because archive will provide a great overview of your blog to your visitors and give them a list of your posts. They will surely find something interesting and they will continue to read your blog!
3. No contact page: It is very annoying for visitors if they have something to tell you and can't find a way to get in touch. Secondly, you risk losing valuable feedback if that is the case.Blogging is all about talking to people. You have something to share with others and you write about it, why should you not give opportunity to listen what your readers have to say to you? Create your contact page and place your email, facebook or twitter profile and connect to people that are visiting your blog. 
4.  Complex navigation: Try to make your navigation structure as simple as possible. This involves using a main navigation bar, having a link back to the homepage on all internal pages, avoiding drop-down menus and so on. Simple is better! Keep your blog clean and simple and your visitors will love it! 
5. Bad typography: If people can't read your content comfortably they will just head somewhere else. Make sure that your font is big enough, that the letter and line spacing is adequate, that you have enough white space surrounding the content and so on. Be careful when you writing new blog post. If you have something useful to tell your visitors pay attention on how do you present your knowledge. High quality content will not do anything for you if your readers are making struggle to read it!
6. Invisible links: Hyperlinks are cornerstones of web navigation, and they should always be easily recognizable. Try to make your hyperlinks underlined. If you don't like that, at least make sure that their color stands out and that users won't get confused regarding what is clickable and what is not.
7.  Too many ads: Many bloggers tend to assume that in order to make money blogging they need to jam ads all over their sites. This is not true. To make money blogging you need to have quality traffic, and too many ads will reduce your quality traffic over the long term. Start with as few ads as possible, and move your way up consciously, always putting your visitors' experience first. Do not put money at  the first place, if you do that you will never make any money at all. Pay attention that the numbers of visitors on statistics are in fact human beings not robots! Treat them nice and they will make you money with just a few ads. We will talk about this more in next posts. 
8. Badges, buttons and widgets: This is another very common mistake. Since it is so easy to add badges, buttons and widgets, many bloggers fill their sidebars completely with them. Most of those items, however, won't add much value to your visitors, while cluttering your design and possibly driving traffic away from your site. Do not overload your blog with useless widgets like calendar, clock, news feed etc. keep it clean and simple! 

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