Maui Social And Mobile: Promoting And Growing Your Blog

I. Basics:

A. Know your goal in blogging

Personal Satisfaction - Expression of Creativity; Sharing Your Hobby or Passion; want to meet new friends, etc.
To Promote My Business - should still be passion related
Be A Professional Blogger - gain income through blogging *For 2 and 3 - your blogging standard would be higher: own URL; correct grammar and spelling; disclosures; site references, need a good web design.

B. Establish A Benchmark And Set A Growth Goal - where is your blog at in the beginning (or at this time

Where are you at:. Find out from: http://www.websitegrader.com/ / http://www.blograder.com/ / http://www.woorank.com/
What is your Page Rank with Google? Alexa Ranking?
Establish a short term goal. ex. increase daily visits by 3
Establish a long term goal. ex. 10,000 page views a month

C. Install An Analytic Tool in the Blog to help monitor growth

II. Promotion and Growth

1. Know Basic SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Why? because Google will bring visitors to your blog.

2. Content is the King

Write interesting content (interesting to you and your reader; things you are passionate about). Be human. Sure key words are important but don't overdo it. Write with passion. Write with humor if you can (and it'd appropriate). Be technical only if it's a technical blog.
Write well - for blogs, it does not have to be too formal - it can be talk strory kind but following basic rules of punctuation, grammar and spelling is important. (my case...)
Length Matters. A 250 word post is good. If less, maybe add photos; if more decide into several posts. If not too long but long enough, chunk it, ot break up. Make lists. Highlight (bold) impt. words.
Words are good but adding photos, videos or slideshows greatly enhance the content and make the lay-out nice. Don't overdo.

3. Participate Actively in Social Media

Find blogs related to your blog. (Technorati.com; AllTop; Google)
Read them and comment on it. Add them in your Blogroll. Subscribe in their feeds or e-mail newsletter.
Be friends with the other bloggers. Make an effort to get noticed by influential bloggers - be friends with them. LINKS are important.
Participate in Blog Carnival and Memes: Aloha Friday, Wordless Wednesday, Photo Hunt Saturday, Sunday Scribblings, Thankful Thursday, Weekly Winners (Photos) Capture It (photos)
Create some loyal commenters by replying on their comments.
Be a guest blogger (especially on blogs with high PR) (A Maui Blog; MauiInformationGuide - PR 4 - Maui.net PR5 (Local blogs for free)

Know Facebook Pages relevant to your blog. Engage there. If the administrator allows others to post on their wall, post relevant links to your blog. Do not overdo. Do this only when you already have established relationship with the owner of the page. ex. there are many existing MAUI pages on FB.

Make sure you have "LIKE (share) BUTTON" on your post. You'll be amazed how that would help promote your blog.

Tweet a link to your blog post. If you get a lot of RT's, you'd hit a jackpot! :) Make sure you have the Tweet button.
Follow famous bloggers and social media "true experts" and learn from them. They will usually tweet out helpful links.

Other Social Networking and Social Marking Tools - YouTube; LinkedIn; Diggs;
Forums and Discussions
Attend Meet-ups
List blog in blog directories

4. Promote in Other Media (esp. on Maui) - newspaper (MauiTime; Maui Family Magazine, Edible Hawaiian Islands; radio, etc.; E-mail newsletter.

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