The best way to determine if a blog is successful or not, is to check the strength and the reach of its network.
A blogging network consists of various channels like the traffic on the blog, the reach and the follower strength of its social media channels, the number of subscribers of the newsletter etc.
These are mostly part of the easily visible network; however there are more channels where the content of a blog reaches but they aren’t so visible but they are equally valuable.
If a blog has to become successful, popular and profitable then it needs to build several content distribution channels. These channels can be built and nurtured by establishing and maintaining relations with other bloggers and influencers. Here, in this article, we will discuss several online networking tips to build and expand your blogging network.
1. Post content consistently: Posting of blog content regularly helps in several ways. Search engines like consistency and rewards such blogs with better rankings and frequent crawls. Additionally, the readers also start to check for new content on days when you publish new posts. This way, your blog builds a dedicated audience in time.
2. Share and Maintain Social Channels: Social channels require posting of content on regular basis. This way, the timelines will be filled with content that is posted a few hours apart. This prevents flooding of timelines of your followers and they interact with the content in a better way.
3. Utilize smaller social networks: Smaller social networks are a gold mine for dedicated and targeted users. These users will navigate from the social site to your blog and if your own content is good, they will become a lot more active on your own blog. They help in boosting commenting and actively share content on the social media.
4. Do active blog commenting: Blog commenting is perhaps one of the best ways to build a co-operative network where every action that you take for other people’s blog, will be returned in several folds. Do remember that if you want help and co-operation from other bloggers, you need to start it first yourself. If you comment on a blog, share their content and link to them, most of them will do the same for you.
5. Utilize Facebook Groups: Facebook groups are some of the best places to share your content and build a dedicated flow of targeted audience. There are no ends to categories in Facebook group and whatever be your niche, you are sure to get some relevant groups where you can share your content.
For best results, always make sure to post good content without outgoing links. Images and text based content are fine to share. Slowly and steadily when the groups moderators and admins start to value your content and presence, start sharing a bit of your promotional content and links and get back some traffic out of those groups.
6. Join Pinterest Public Boards: Pinterest public boards work the same way. Look for popular boards that allow submissions from contributors. Once you are able to find such boards, start requesting to join those boards. If you are allowed to post on those boards, you can easily pin your content and get some traffic coming.
7. Take out some time for blogging forums: There are tons of blogging forums that has been operational for years. Surely there isn’t a lot of traffic on those forums but they are still active and if you add to their conversations, they do respond and even follow back to your blog and social channels.
8. Share other bloggers content: The whole point of doing co-operation in blogging is to share the blogging benefits among your network. Be it traffic, subscribers, social shares, everything flows in the network well but the process starts with you. Start sharing other people’s content in your timeline across all social media channels and make sure to tag the bloggers whose content you share so that they get notified.
9. Make a habit for linking out: Linking to relevant content especially from a blogging contact is a good way to boost your connection. This way, not only the blogging contact will be happy with your effort, chances are that soon he will link back to some of your content.
10. Promote others on your Email Newsletter: News letters are often under looked by bloggers. Most bloggers do not have an auto-responder series or their newsletters sometime lack content and are almost never delivered consistently. If you make a habit of linking and featuring other bloggers in your newsletter, just like your blog posts, your newsletters too will also start getting a lot of readership.
11. Include Call-to-Action wherever possible: The best way to get help and co-operation from others is to simply ask and make yourself heard. Often due to lack of good call-to-action buttons bloggers lose sale, subscription or even comments. If you want people to share your content, make sure to have a call-to-action button that asks people to share your content.
12. Write blog posts featuring commentators: Comments section is a powerful networking system which comes in-built with your blog. Most bloggers fail to use this system to its fullest. When you start to see some comments on your blog, it is time to make your comments section stand out. Look for regular commentators and feature them on your next blog post. Call them out, link to them; mention their social profiles so that they get even more involved with your blog.
13. Start an Interview Series: Just like features, interviews too are some of the best form of blogging content. Look for influencers in your niche. Sort list them and start sending them emails for doing an interview for your blog. Once you start to see some positive responses, send your target influencer some questions. With the received answers, write an article and post it on your blog.
14. Get active on Quora: Find questions related to your niche in Quora. Reply to those questions with the best answers that you can provide. Since these questions are on your niche, it shouldn’t be that difficult to answer them. Feel free to link to your relevant blog posts from your answer for additional information.
15. Offer free advice to new bloggers: New bloggers are easy to on-board. They always have a lot of questions and as an experienced blogger you can answer most of their questions. Soon you will find that plenty of these new bloggers have started to follow your blog and your social channels.
In the world of blogging, your success directly depends on the power of your network. If your network is strong, your content will reach the masses and everything will start to fall in place.