Now that I have a blog, it’s time to invite more people to come out and play. Perhaps you have a blog that you’d like to promote, so these tips will come in handy for you as well.  So, I’m going to do some research online and find out what successful bloggers do to promote their blogs.

First, we’ll start with these tips I found on Google (some of these are specific to using Blogger):

• Connect your blog to Google+. Switch your Blogger profile to Google+ to take advantage of automatic sharing, the Google+ blogging community, and upcoming features designed to help you build a following. Learn more about what it means to switch your Blogger profile to Google+.

• Write quality content and do it well. No one wants to stumble over bad writing and terrible grammar.

• Keep search engines in mind. Take advantage of Blogger’s Search Preferences features to make sure it easier for those seeking your content.

• Enable Email This Post. If you use Email This Post on your blog, people will be able to forward your posts to friends. This might not have an immediate impact on your site stats, but it enables others to publicize your blog for you.

• Turn on your site feed. When people subscribe to your site feed in their newsreaders, they’re more likely to read your posts.

• Add your blog to Blogger’s listings. When you add your blog to our listings it shows up in Nextblog, Recently Updated, and other places. It’s like opting-in to traffic.

• Publish regular updates. The more you blog, the more traffic you’ll get.

• Think of your audience. A good way to build an audience is to speak to one in particular. When you keep your audience in mind, your writing gains focus. Focus goes a long way toward repeat visitors.

• Put your blog URL in your email signature. Think of how many forwarded emails you’ve seen in your day, and just imagine the possibilities.

• Submit your address to blog search sites and directories. People look for blog content at Technorati every day, are you on their list? You should be. Submit your blog’s url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex, Popdex, and any other site of that ilk you come across.

• Be an active commenter. If you come across a blog you like, why not leave a comment? This way, others who read and are interested in your comment and click back to your profile and check out your blogs.

• Set your blog to Send Pings. When this setting is activated, your blog will be included in various “recently updated” lists on the web as well as other blog-related services.

Ready for a little more? This is a great exercise because I’m learning things I had no idea about. Like Permalinks.  The search engines use the Title of your blog post, also known as the Permalink, to index your site. The more specific your blog title is, the better chance you have of showing up higher in the search results for the ideas and key words you are blogging about, or targeting.

If your blog is reaching out to women, you’ll want to consider submitting your blog to the BlogHer directory. Read through the guidelines and then follow the step by step process.

We’ll finish off today’s research with this tip from Famousbloggers.net:

“On-Blog Twitter and Facebook Engagement

There are plenty of ways you can do this, but one of the better ways is by adding Facebook ‘Like’ and ‘Tweet’ buttons at the end of every page. So, if the visitor likes your post, they can click on the Like button and the link to your blog post will appear on their Facebook profile page. Not only will this help your blog post go viral, but search engines do consider the number of ‘likes’ in their search algorithm to rank your page. The ‘Tweet This’ button performs along similar lines, and visitors who press this button will send out a Tweet with respect to your blog post. All in all, these are the kind of social sharing mechanisms that most bloggers are adopting as they are reaping rich dividends of the same.”

So there’s some information that I hope will help everyone with their blogs and bring some new organic search traffic your way.

My next post will feature a new craft project, a mini album, featuring some beautiful ribbon from Lovebug Creations and some techniques that I’ve learned over the years to create projects with depth and dimension.

Thanks for joining me here at Scarlet Calliope and come back tomorrow!