After you set up a blog and start adding some posts, you will want to get the word out. To do that, you can use social bookmarking, which is just a way of tagging that blog post into areas that collect information from all over the web. It works about the same as when you bookmark a site in your web browser for yourself, except for social bookmarking you are doing it to a social storage area where many people can see what you've bookmarked. People who subscribe to these services and are searching for specific content have an easier time finding it then.
The nice thing about social bookmarking is that people can comment and rate the bookmarks that you add to a social networking site. In this way, you can have great exposure for a site and allow others to add their own ideas to it too. An example of a social bookmarking site is del.ici.ous.
News
If your blogs are more about current events, the latest technologies, or even politics, than you will want to use social news sites like Digg.com. These sites offer round-the-clock news and can be particularly popular with news hounds. They show up to comment and rate stories and depending on their popularity, you can land on the front page and get lots of traffic! So, be sure to use this site if your blog is appropriate for it.
Tags
When you write up a post, the blog interface will have a place for you to put tags in to identify what the article is about. You can simply type in some key words there, or you can use a plug-in like SimpleTags to help you identify good tag keywords. Either way, the more relevant the key words and the more searchable, the easier it is for people to find your blog. So, be sure to add that information in if you want to attract people to your blog.
Comments
As you begin to understand the blog world, you will start to develop relationships with other bloggers. You can use that networking to help you create more traffic for your site simply by going to other blogs and commenting on a popular entry. When you comment, many blogs automatically put in your blog URL in where your name appears, if you are in the same community. And, you can also use html to add your own link to an article that might be relevant to the post.
People who come to read the other blog will read the comments and if your's is interesting they may follow your link or click on your name. Either way, this will produce much more traffic for you than simply sticking to your own blog.
RSS Feed
This feature is automatic on Wordpress blogs and a plug-in in other blogs. You should have it enabled because it allows people to subscribe to your RSS feed. This feed gets sent to their newsreader every time you update your blog, so it keeps people motivated to keep visiting, but only when new content is posted. The more regularly you update your blog, the more frequent the RSS feed is updated and the more people visit your blog.
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