Blog Azeroth

Something i've been wanting to ask fellow bloggers since i started back in September, not sure this is the right forum for it but we aint got a Spammeral Chat in here yet
Anyways, my question as stated in the title: How to best advertise your blog.

I think my blog is pretty okay and with 5 posts/week should provide a nice fix for those people online who are looking for that daily wow-fix when not logged in the game itsself.
Somehow i expected more readers by now (12k visits since September, average 115/day.. pageviews at 20k but not sure what is supposed to be the right indication) but perhaps i'm just impatient or just simply not as entertaining as i hoped.
To not bruise my own ego i'm blaming advertisement for now.

I've added myself to a few searchpages like google, use Technorati, added Feedburner to feed RSS and some blog directories.
Also i try to keep in contact with other bloggers and post reactions/articles on blogs and forums (link in my signature).
Been featured on BRK once (actually i was a small link in a long list) which did skyrocket the hits for a couple of days, leaving me with more daily hits after that so at least some people managed to find me that way.
Simular effects i had with other bloggers (BBB for example).
Swapped some blog links with other blogs aswell.

So i'm curious what other ways there are to draw attention to your blog. Keeping people there is step two but i'm under the impression the first one is my biggest problem for now.
Would love to hear from others (and i suppose more people are interested).

Thnx,
Exanimo

I think the best one can do to advertise one's blog is to comment on other blogs or write posts linking to other blogs.

At least that is what I am trying to do

The best thing any blogger can do is comment on other peoples blogs. Make sure you have something useful to say or something to contribute to the discussion. Don't just write "I agree!" or "I disagree!". I don't know about the other folks here, but I track EVERY single inbound link via Technorati, Wordpress, and Google. So if I've ever been linked, I always check who it is. I'm always on the hunt to add things to my reader.

The next best thing you can do is continue to write and continue to blog. If you write more, people will read, they will like what they're reading, so they might mention it on their blog, and other people will naturally become curious.

I'm currently experimenting with various Social media sites like Stumbleupon (I've gotten several big spikes in traffic because some of my posts have been Stumbled).

Yashima and Matticus basically nailed it. I commented on a few blogs (BRK, Egotistical Priest, Mania's Arcania, Resto4Life, Priestly Endeavors) and my readership started to grow.

Eventually, those people linked to me (thank you, thank you all!) or added my blog to their blogrolls, and readership jumped.

Later, one of my articles was highlighted in a WoW Insider column (that's the Big Time!), and I got a huge spike. I wasn't tracking RSS subscribers the first two times that happened, but after an article was cited this week, my subscriber base went up by 10!

So, the key is to be visible. If you're a WordPress blogger, be sure you have an OpenID, so when you comment on Blogspot (Blogger) blogs, your OpenID links as seamlessly as possible to your blog. (And even then, it's kludgy.)

I very recently started blogging (December 2007) but I really like the advice from ProBlogger there's always good stuff in there. Ideas for increasing readership, finding topics, and other blogger skills. I also notice a nice bump in readership when I find a post on non-traditional blogger media like the wow-forums that I feel I can offer some decent insight into. I can almost gauge whether people agree with me by the amount of additional traffic it creates.

@ Matticus- I also find myself scanning my stats and visiting every new referrer. What can I say? I love people who love me...

I totally stole Probloggers front end >8).

Well I just started blogging myself after reading a lot of the other blogs on a daily basis. Once I had a blog setup, I basically put myself out there by commenting on their articles. This in turn allowed them to come to my blog and see what I was about.

I then managed to get myself mentioned by some of the other bloggers, which has increased my readership. I even managed to get a blog I wrote linked in someone else's blog.

I honestly am not to worried about how many people I have reading at this point. I know at least people are looking at what I wrote, and that is enough for me!

I've recently gotten involved in something called EntreCard, a kind of non-paid ad exchange system with its own economy.

I have a LOT to say on the subject and can write a more in depth post for those who are interested in a little bit.

While at the moment I feel EntreCard is being dominated by "blog for money" types, I really feel that, after testing it out for a few weeks now, with enough participation, it can easily be leveraged for the WoW blog community.

EntreCard has brought me some decent traffic, it costs no money, and is non-intrusive on a blog. I think that better results would be obtained if I had a larger pool of bloggers similar to myself to exchange ads with.

Obviously this is very brief and sketchy, but given some time, I can write up a pretty informative post on what I've learned through my testing of EntreCard and how I think it can benefit WoW bloggers in particular.

But I just got in from work, and my brains hurt.

TJ, I also had a look at EntreCard and it does look intriguing. Think of it was an E-Business card. If you've got some time, I'd really appreciate a brief write up and maybe we could compare notes or something. =)

one evil way to get people to your blog (I haven't done this) is make a post on why you're class is sooo much better than others, before you know it, you'll have many comments, other blogs will be writing a post on how wrong you are...

This is probably true, but also a joke.

Or call TJ an Icky... =P

I LOLed.

I'm going to write up a separate post on EntreCard this morning, since I've been planning on doing that for some time now anyway for my own blog, and it would fit better here, but anyway in the meantime, some things that have worked for me.

I don't advertise my blog anywhere, except for on EntreCard at the moment, but have experienced pretty steady visitor growth since I started with this blog. I also had a previous blog that I ran the same way, and the traffic to that one was 3 or 4 or 5 or I don't even remember how many times more than the one I have now - I'm happier where I'm at now, but for those of you looking for more traffic, here's some stuff I picked up blogging since the dawn of time. I'm not necessarily into advertising, and tend to prefer more organic traffic growth. There's tons of ways to drive droves of people to your site - tricks, gimmicks, contests, tons of stuff - but long term sustainable growth of traffic comes from building a loyal community and letting them go out and talk about you.

1. People stopping by in great numbers boosts your traffic, to be sure, but the way to get consistent growth is through regular, consistent readers who are going to go out and do your advertising work for you, by promotiing one of your posts or linking from their own blog. In order to get those readers, consistency and frequency are key. Someone said in another post, there's always someone out there who wants to read what you write, so developing a good, solid blogging habit, writing every day or on whatever schedule you've set for yourself, as long as it is frequent and consistent, will get you plenty of loyal readers who will bring friends. Even if you think you're writing crap, write it anyway. Write everything, always, no matter what. Soon it's an ingrained habit and way easier, and even the posts you think are absolute crap are sometimes the ones to absolutely take off in terms of visits, comments, discussion, etc - which only leads to more posts.

2. Make sure you're as interactive with your readers as you can be. Eventually, this gets out of hand and is harder and harder to do, but do the absolute best you can. Especially for a new blog just starting out, respond to comments through email and on your site, if you notice someone commenting for the first time, drop them an email thanking them for stopping by, etc. The more involved you are with your readers, the more likely they are to stay around and build a community for you, which is going to draw more people over time, slow and steady, but more nonetheless, and it will draw the kind of traffic you want - a link from BRK, one of your posts getting on digg, etc - that's going to bring a big spike, but you need to count on the small community of loyal readers to build you long lasting consistent traffic.

3. Make connections to other bloggers you admire. For example, ask if you can interview them, mail them some questions and post it on your site, and let them know you're doing it so that they can link from their site if they choose to. Take advantage of the trackback feature whenever you can - the readers of other sites interested in the post their reading will follow the trackback to your site to continue/add to the discussion.

4. Write a guest post for another site. Even bloggers without billions upon billions of hits every day appreciate a break every now and then, and that's free advertising for you, whether that blog gets 10 visitors a day or 10,000. Find a blog you like/admire/participate in, comments-wise, and write a post that suits the tone and topic of that site. If you're a lock and you really like a priest blog, write something about lock/priest interaction in raids from your point of view. (You can't have that idea, though, because look right here, I just wrote it: Stop fscking healing meh!!!. Sorry.) Anyway, write the post, drop the blogger an email, and ask them if they'd like to use it for their site. Ask them if they'd write something for you site, ask them if they'd do a joint post with you for one of your sites, ask them if they'll write a counterpoint post to one of your posts, or if you can write one for one of theirs. Again, doesn't matter how big or small the blog you're targeting is.

ANYway. Like I said, I don't know so much about advertising, exactly, as far as actual ads go, but those are some pretty decent ways to work on growing your own community. Getting your link out there is all well and good, the more sites you're link from, the more traffic you're going to get, but consistent visitors who participate regularly in your site are the ones you want to target, and they're less likely to be swayed by the random link here and there.

Um... the end.

PS - Calling me an icky only works once, and Dammerung has already cornered that market.

This is more toward what to write for visitors than it is to advertise your blog but using stats programs, you can see what others searched for to find your blog, but many times only one word of there search matched your blog, check out the other words they searched for and see if that could lead you to another post, it maybe something you'd like to write about and you already know it's something someone is interested in

I check my Sitemeter every single day to see what brought viewers my way. In fact, it inspired my 4-part series about leveling a warlock and, from the get-go, brought a LOT of new readership. Honestly, if you haven't attached Sitemeter to your blog yet, do it. It may not give you the most specific info you need, but what it does provide can tell you a little bit more about what people are searching for and give you a better idea on how to improve your blog and maintain its readership.

I was under the impression Sitemeter had a limit or cap on the amount of traffic it recorded (for the free version or something).

Google analytics for me!

Nope, don't think so. Obviously if you want to pay for it it'll probably give you even more info. But the free version works just fine for me. It lets me know where folks came from, what page they entered and exited and if they came from somewhere like Google, what their search parameters were. Quite handy for a free tool, methinks.

Plus, I get the biggest kick out of finding a new reader from some faraway foreign country. Today recorded my first visitor from Chile, which made me as excited as a 4-year old in the toy section at K-Mart.

hehehehe, that visitor from Chile would be me... greetings from the (way too) sunny south america!

Oh yeah...TJ called me out by name one day, and that drove a spike too. Unfortunately, I can't always be as punny as Fio.

/wave!

SiteMeter will count all your visitors and pageviews. However, the free version will only track 500 lines/KB (I don't remember the unit of measure) of additional info; e.g., referring links, visitor IPs, etc.

That's why I use SiteMeter, StatCounter, FeedBurner, and Technorati. And the beautiful thing is, if you don't want to "clutter" your site with their logos and widgets, you don't have to. (On the other hand, doing so helps keep all those services free to us!)

You might want to add Histats.com to that list.
Only thing it missed is referring URL's - it only shows referring domains not full url.

Also, if you're deep into search engine traffic analysis, 103bees.com is cool but lots of times useless imo.

Personally I love entrecard and although I don't have much traffic 4 per day on average. This is mostly because no one has accepted my adverts ! also thanks for mentioning me exanimo.

sincerely,
BBB