Image Courtesy of D'Arcy Norman on flickr
As I said in my post yesterday about building back-links, networking within your blogging niche is very important. Networking is the act of making friends and connecting with people around you; most often it is a term used in business. One is said to network when they are friendly, make contacts with other businesses and maintain relationships with other business people.
What is the Point?
The point of networking in the blogging world is to make friends and contacts, share ideas and content. If you have someone in your niche with whom you network, then you have someone who is not unwilling to link to your articles when they write similar articles and who will tell their readers that you have something to say. Its always good to know your neighbours, and networking is just that. Networking is a 2-way street, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours – if you want them to link to you, you have to link to them!
5 Tips to Good Networking
- Commenting!- A very important method of networking. Commenting is a good way to tell the blogger that you are interested in what they say, and they will pick up on that. Everyone likes to feel that they have helped or that they have stimulated some thought through their posts; so commenting on a blog is a good way to make sure that you let them know you found them interesting. Who knows, they may start commenting on your blog and you can share your ideas in future articles and collaborate.
- Keep it relative- If you want to network with bloggers, don’t start at the top! A-List Bloggers won’t want to link to you, because you provide no benefit to them by linking to them – you are a small fish and your link carries little clout. Find bloggers who are closer to your range – look for the number of comments, feed subscribers and months they have been blogging for.
- Don’t be shy- If you want to network with other bloggers, you have to take initiative and be confident. Ask them to visit your blog and see if they can find anything of value to link to, and tell them that you will link to one of their post’s in return. People will appreciate the honesty and the opportunity to get a link!
- Keep up-to-date- If you want to network in your blog, you are going to need to have up-to-date content. Other bloggers will only link to your stuff if it is relevant, so subscribe to lots and lots of blogs in your niche and soak up as much current information as possible. It will also make your writing more interesting because you can throw facts in that are current and up-to-date. You will look like you know what you are talking about.
- Be Social – Interact with your other bloggers, using not just conventional methods like email, but also using social media. Its so easy to talk to someone on Twitter and to give them a mention. I’ll be social right now and link to Aaron Rockey’s post about Malicious Code in Wordpress Themes. No problem Aaron
As a blogger or even businessman, Networking is VERY important so make sure its on your mind at all times. And, I hope that you learnt something new reading this article!
Useful Resources
As per usual, I will provide my list of resources related to the topic of blog networking. Note – If you would like one of your articles on this list in the future, don’t hesitate to contact me!
- Networking Tips for the Busy Designer – Whilst the post is aimed at graphic designers, it has a universal theme that can be applied to any career. Check it out.
- 5 Killer Blog Networking Tips – Different tips to the ones outlined in this post, but they are invaluable tips to take away.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Blogoid Blog Design. Blogoid Blog Design said: Read my 5 Awesome Tips to Effective Blog Networking if you haven't already! – http://bit.ly/atoXOp [...]