I keep getting asked by new bloggers how to get more traffic, links and comments. The book is filled with tips on these very subjects I say. But the world is changing fast, I am told.
Robert and I were early to the blog party, we are told, and that helped us gain prominence.
Maybe. Maybe not.
Being early always helps. Scoble was about the 250th blogger and over two years later I was about 6.3 millionth. It would be nice if I could argue that is why his traffic, comments and links run 5-10 times higher than mine. It would be nice to use that to discount the possibility that more people are interested in the topics he covers and the way he expresses himself than they do me. But then, how do I account for Michael Arrington, who started blogging nearly two years after me and is now ranked higher than Scoble. How do I account for Jeremiah Owyang, Kami Huse, and KD Paine who all started long after me and are now on trajectory to pass me by?
I blog mostly on business and blogging and more recently Web 2.0 companies and communities. There are many people who are interested in these topics, so this helps my rankings. I post between 10-25 times a week, so this helps my rankings. go out of the way to find new business blogs that will interest my readers and I link to them. Yep, that helps too. Every few days, I check Technorati and find the conversations relevant to me and the readers who matter to me, and this of course helps as well. I link a lot. That helps. I leave comments on other people's blogs, which of course is a plus. I often resist my temptations to cover multiple subjects in a blog. I toss in enough personal stuff so that readers see my humanity, but I get back to my core topics as often as I can. I let people know that I want to speak and consult for money, but I don't belabor that, because it's not why people come here.
Michael Arrington does a masterful job of analyzing Web 2.0 companies making him invaluable to any company or person either in the space or simply reviewing the space. Investors want to know what he has to say. Traditional press covering the topic cannot live without him. He's more relevant to more people than I am. Robert is the poster child for the humanization of businesses. A huge number of people care about that.
I won't speak for myself, but I will say that Michael and Robert write with passion and knowledge. They are occasionally wrong--sometimes dead wrong, but that just makes them more human and more like the rest of us. Jeremiah is a new guy on the block with a consistently positive view and a passion for building communities. KD addresses one of the great chasms in the new marketing--how do you measure all that stuff. Kami is a new voice in PR. She never loses focus.
All of us use multiple tools to monitor other conversations and bloggers and we keep vigilant on what is being said about ourselves and the topics we care about. We are all generous, sending or visitors to other places to see things that would be valuable to them. When we make factual errors, we own up to them and apologize of we feel the situation merits. Some of us get sucked into responding to smarmy comments that should be ignored, but we also have gained the wisdom of listening closely to critical voices and thinking about what is being said.
Robert and I have the same tips for people getting started: Join other conversations. Don't just jump onto someone's blog and say, "I think this is great" or "I think this sucks." Add some new fact or insight to the conversation. Other bloggers will come to your blog and see what you have to say. They will write about you if they think you are contributing something to the conversation.
There is one think about ratings. They are sometimes overrated. You could have a political blog and have only three readers. If they happen to be the heads of state of China, the United States and Russia, you would be a very influential blogger with awful technorati rankings.
You need to be very clear in your mind why you are blogging, who you hope to reach and what you would like to achieve. You need to know your community and you need to understand that in the new worlds currently forming the people who are most generous to their communities will emerge to be the most influential.
