Welcome back for Part 5 of our 8 Part Social Media series. Todays topic is about the need for you and your company to participate on other Blogs. The fact is, it takes time to build a reputation on the internet and sometimes its better for you to go out and make some noise and get some attention (i.e. be proactive) rather than to sit back and wait for people to come and find you. With that in mind here are your strategies for doing that very thing.
First youll need to find a few Blogs that cover your specific industry and make a habit of surfing to them at least weekly to see whats being posted, whats new and whats news. Get to know who the writers are and what their opinions are and, when youre ready, start leaving constructive, interesting comments and notes about their posts. If you need help finding Blogs Technorati has a list of the Small Business Blogs that you can use for reference.
Once youve found a few good Blogs to follow youre ready for some more advanced techniques of building a rep for yourself. By now you have hopefully built a level of trust and credibility due to leaving great comments, asking interesting questions and even leaving bits of useful advice on other Blog posts.
You can now use the affinity that you have grown to ask some of these writers to let you have a go at a Guest Post on their Blog. This is an excellent way to have your opinions and ideas seen by a much larger audience (depending on the Blog). Youll want to agree on the topic and send a draft of your post ahead of the scheduled posting date of course so that all goes smoothly (and youre invited back).
You can also ask that they guest post on your Blog also, which will bring over readers from their Blog to yours and open up some new doors in the process. If you cant do this with the big guys right away dont get discouraged. Social Media takes time to build and bear fruit and so does Blogging of any kind.
How To Guest Post To Promote Your Blog from blogging expert Darren Rowse is a definite must-read if you want to start guest Blogging to build your business.
So get started making a Blogging name for yourself and make sure to come back and see us for Part 6, Multimedia!