So you have your blog and you are looking to start making your first few posts. Or maybe, you have been posting for a little while and you are not seeing the blog traffic you hoped for? Good news, this post will show you how to get your content seen by more people, build your online reputation and increase the viral nature of your posts. Not bad eh?

So, let’s not waste time, let’s get started:

Blog Traffic Step #1 – Link Out

Within each one of your blog posts you need to quote and link out to about 5 or 6 different external sources. The best place to find people to quote and reference is from your competitor’s own blogs, or from the blogging efforts of other people that are in your niche, but that aren’t direct competitors. Don’t link to their product pages, sales pages, or even their front pages. ALWAYS quote from and then link back to,one of their actual blog posts. This is blogging your way to a great reputation!

Also Note: be sure to reference each person/post-author by name. Take the time to make sure it says exactly who the author of the post is. If a specific, real name isn’t displayed as being the author, then move on and find a different post to use.

You NEED to reference a specific person because later these people will hopefully help you with promotion and its much easier to get a real person to help you than a faceless website address.

Doing this outbound linking/quoting/citing/referencing thing is essential (and mandatory) and also helpful for 10 or 12 different reasons (that you’ll figure out eventually if you don’t already know) one of which I’m about to elaborate upon below.

Blog Traffic Step #2 – Get Help Promoting

Again, same thing here, same as above; no need to get fancy. Start with all the people you just linked out to from within each of your blog posts. 20 posts X 5 outbound links each = 100 people you now need to start “baiting” into doing your blog post promotions for you.

PLEASE note that I specifically said, ‘bait’ into promoting for you. I didn’t say, ‘ask’, I didn’t say, ‘beg’, and I didn’t say ‘push’ or ‘pester’. That’s bad blogging etiquette, won’t help increase your blog traffic and looks desperate which you don’t want.

Baiting means that they ‘decided’ to do it of their own free-will (i.e, they, ‘discovered’ you (not the other way around).

I’m not suggesting that you write all 20 posts at once and then bait all 100 people at once; just that the final tally after you’ve written and published all 20 articles will be around 100 people at your disposal.

In reality, what you will do is write one article (ie, answer one common customer question) link to 5 or 6 people from it, publish the post, and then start getting (genuinely) friendly with those 5 or 6 people.

The quickest, easiest, most efficient way to do that is by using twitter.

After you publish your first post, locate the twitter profiles of the people you linked out to from within your post, add those 5-6 people to your ‘follow’ list in twitter, and then send out your first tweet regarding your newest post (@mentioning those people).

More about @mentions: Mentioning 5 or 6 people in the same tweet isn’t exactly optimal and may seem a bit awkward, but in most cases it’s better than the alternative, which is sending out 5 or 6 consecutive tweets with only one @mention in each (thus, promoting your own blog post 6 times in a row, which isn’t good).

If it makes you feel better, maybe do it twice with 3 @mentions in each—that wouldn’t be so bad I guess.

Example Tweet …

New Post: [insert the shortlink to your new post here] featuring @person1 @person2 @person3 @person4 @person5 via @yourowntwitterhandle

Why?

The first thing people check, and the thing they check most often, on twitter, is their ‘mention’ feed. The mention feed shows only the tweets that (as you might imagine) @mention them.

They see that you mentioned them in your tweet (ie, THEY NOTICE YOU, for the first time ever possibly). They see that you used the word ‘featuring’ in your tweet, which suggests that the blog post you just tweeted about must have something to do with them (which is exactly right, you quoted them in your blog post, cited them by name, and even linked to one of their own blog posts).

What do you think their opinion of you might be at this point?

Well, let’s see; what would yours be of them???

Short answer—They think you’re AWESOME!

Worst case, they will at least go look at your new post, and might even read it. Or they might just scroll down to the part where they are quoted and see what was said and which of their posts you linked out to.

Either way, you’ve made a great first impression because…

1. You quoted them in your post.

2. You gave them a link to one of their posts.

And 3. You did it all without asking for anything in return, and you weren’t pushy about promoting those facts too aggressively (ie, you didn’t email them about mentioning them in your post, you never actually ‘asked’ them to promote it for you, nor even to read it for that matter, and you didn’t pester them with a ton of questions about whether they liked it or not, etcetera.

What about a best case scenario?

Well let’s see … they will probably ‘follow’ you back on twitter (which is good, because then they will see all of your future ‘new post tweets’).

Maybe they will also ‘retweet’ your post link to all of their twitter followers.

They will probably at least publicly thank you (on twitter) for the mention and the link (which all of their followers will then see and notice you and your post).

They may comment on your post directly. They may start a conversation on twitter about the topic of your post. They might even share your post on their other social media channels (where all their other followers will see it). This is blogging heaven and will significantly increase your blog traffic!

You’ve potentially made a new blog-promotion-buddy for life (multiply that by 100 and you can start to see where all this is going, and then later by 1,000, and so on, and so on).

You’re building your blogging network here! Awesome; keep at it and watch what happens your blog traffic.

Later they may even quote, cite, and linkback to your post from one of their own posts, or from a guest post they write on another related site.

If they really take a liking to you, they might even ask you to guest post for them (great way to get a bunch of new eyeballs to your site and a chance to showcase your blogging skills)

And don’t forget; you @mentioned at least 5 or 6 people, so make sure you multiply all that ‘potential’ by 5X or 6X (and that’s your first post).

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves though; it’s actually more likely that nothing at all will happen the first few times you do this. It might take some time to get yourself established within the blogging community.

No worries though, you’ve got time, this is long-haul type stuff you’re doing here, you’re building yourself a blogging base; just keep at it, move on to your next post and start the same process all over again, and again, and again.

Eventually you’re gonna ‘stick’, if for nothing else, just because of familiarity; they see you mentioning people on twitter all the time, they see you linking out to other people from your blog posts all the time. Basically they just ‘get used to’ seeing you around, and start to recognize you as a generous ‘team player’ (the ultimate social compliment in my opinion).

Also note: Obviously there are all sorts of other channels you could use to keep promoting this same post, and maybe eventually you will start using a bunch of other channels, but right now all I’m trying to do is get you started on this one blog traffic strategy.

20 posts or so will build you up a nice little base of operations, and a decent sized network of blogging – buddies and twitter followers. Not a huge base or following, but certainly a good quick blogging starter package. It will significantly help your blog traffic.

One final message – Your content can’t be total rubbish. If it is, none of those things mentioned above will EVER happen.

A 2nd final message: All those new friends you just made (that helped you out by retweeting your posts and such on twitter) aren’t going to stay friends with you very long if you don’t return the favors early and often.

Blog Traffic Summary

You’re all part of a community/network together now, so make sure you pay attention and consistently retweet their posts too, comment on their blogs, and all that good stuff.

You don’t have to do this strategy for every single post any person in your new blogging network publishes, but you do have to put in a damn good effort on a very consistent basis. Trust me, you’re gonna need them again, so don’t be one of those people that only comes around when they need something.

Implement this one strategy and you will be well on your way to building a strong online presence, creating strong friendships and boosting your blog traffic.

Do you have any strategies that work for you to increase your blog traffic?