167 million blogs are housed on the World Wide Web. That gives you a lot of places to expand your sphere of influence. Lots of other bloggers will give you some of their spotlight. Accessing audiences of other bloggers isn’t as hard as you might think, and the rewards can be big. Think of this process as speaking in front of a large audience, only someone else got them in the room for you.
It’s a lot of work, but everything about building an internet audience takes time and effort. You’ve probably done something like it before.
If you were ever the new kid in school or the new employee in the office, you knew you had to make an effort to fit in. You also knew that not making that effort would keep you from building valuable relationships.
So, you said “hello”. You let people know you were interested in what they had to say. Maybe you met a couple of others you had something in common with. You got to know them. They showed you around. They introduced you to some of their friends. You discovered some interests in common.
As time went on, you gave back with help and advice of your own. You made friends with each other’s friends. You cheered each other on. You found your group.
The same thing happens in business. Only, by participating in the communities that other blogger have built, you can accelerate the process of building these valuable relationships. Here’s how to develop your own circle of influence in the blogosphere:
- Find the group of people who make up your audience. Meet them on the blogs they already follow.
- For ideas on where to participate, do a simple Google search for blogs in your niche. Blog directories like Technorati list them by category.
- Join communities in your target market. Don’t judge them merely on size of the group. Bigger isn’t necessarily better. In a big community you can get lost in the noise. It might be easier to draw attention in smaller groups.
- Watch the discussions. Spend time getting to know the culture and what is being discussed.
- Participate with comments. Give to give. Share your expertise. Show that you add value to the discussions. Ask for nothing in return.
- If you want to make a bigger commitment to the group, ask the blog owner for some of the spotlight and let you contribute blogs with your byline, including mentioning your business and website.
Developing business with guest blogging takes time and hard work. Most businesses won’t do what it takes to create this amount of attention. Doing something very few are willing to do makes you all the more noticeable.
Do you have any experience with guest blogging? Have you been successful with getting blog audience attention by participating in the conversations? We know the process takes time and want to hear what really happens when you put a marketing plan like this to work.