Have you ever looked at other blogs and wondered how they get loads of comments when your blog doesn’t?

Have you ever published a post and wondered why nobody showed up to read it?

People don’t just find your blog automatically. You need to let them know you exist. Here are a few tips to help you find people.

1. Use Twitter and Google+.

I’m not going to suggest you should use every social network on the web. I also know everybody has their preferred sites. For me, Twitter is an incredibly valuable resource and I highly recommend it.

More recently, I’ve started using Google+ more, and it’s also a great site. The important thing here is to USE the sites – that means talking to people, and not just posting links.

2. Write Guest Posts.

You’re never going to find readers for your blog if you don’t start putting yourself out there. That means writing guest posts.

Until you’ve taken the plunge and written your first couple of guest posts, it can seem daunting – but don’t worry! Lots of bloggers accept guest posts, and the bloggers I’ve approached with a guest post have been very friendly and grateful for the submission.

Just make sure you make your guest posts blindingly good. After all, you’re performing on somebody’s else’s turf – treat the audience with the respect they deserve. Don’t trot out a half-baked piece of crap.

3. Network and Share Like Crazy.

Every time I see an interesting post on Twitter, I click the link and check it out. The ones I really like make it into my weekly link love posts. Additionally, they also get added to my Buffer queue, which basically means I’ll share the link on Twitter. All the posts get submitted to StumbleUpon, and I include three of them in my weekly blog newsletter. I usually follow the post author on Twitter, and send them a quick tweet to say that I liked their post.

This sounds like a lot of stuff, but it actually doesn’t take that long to do. As a starting point, I’d highly recommend creating a link love folder that you save all your favourite posts into, and that you periodically clear out as you share them. I find this is better than tweeting the links as you come across them.

Bottom line: all this sharing will make people notice how you’re helping them out. I don’t do it to get something back, but I do know a few people have been more than happy to read and share some of my stuff if they I enjoyed it. Before I started networking to this level, people sharing my stuff was very rare.

4. Reply to Newsletters.

OK, so first you’ll need to find newsletters and subscribe to them. Lots of people have newsletters – if you see one on a blog you enjoy reading, go and add yourself to the list. Don’t worry about being spammed – you can always opt out. However, it doesn’t hurt to set up an email address just for signing up for newsletters. I do this with an address that simply forwards to my main email account.

Once you’ve subscribed to a few newsletters, make sure you set up a rule that automatically moves all of the newsletter emails to a folder. In Gmail, set it up to bypass the inbox and archive the email, but add a label to it and leave it unread. This way you can go and read your newsletter emails when you feel like it, and not have them clogging up your inbox.

Whenever you read a really good newsletter, take a moment to reply to the author and say thank you. Tell them you enjoyed the newsletter. It doesn’t take long to send that email – but it is a really, really nice email to receive.

5. Be Helpful.

I used to run a blog with a 50/50 split between positive and negative posts. The positive posts would suggest ways to get people to your blog, whereas the negative posts would tell you what not to do with your blog.

Although the negative posts were occasionally humorous as I went off on a big old rant, they were sometimes scathing, and not particularly constructive.

I’ve since learned that instead of writing a generic comment saying not to do something that I saw on maybe one or two blogs, it would make more sense to approach the bloggers directly to let them know about the problems with their blog – along with how to fix them.

I try to steer clear of telling specific people how I think they should run their blog (unless they ask!), and instead focus on technical things that are quite clear cut. Such as your feed doesn’t work, or your HTML is broken. Or a subscription page has the wrong link.

By focusing on explaining the issues at hand and approaching the people concerned, I’ve found it’s a much more rewarding experience than simply ranting about weird and wonderful issues in a blog post that hardly anyone is going to read, let alone share.

Discussion

What do you think? Do you sometimes feel like you’re waiting for people to show up at your blog? How else would you find readers?

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