next »

[dongle]

The Koduco Games blog has an ok amount of readers. We primarily get readers via twitter spam and posting our articles on link aggregation sites like Reddit. What are other effective, non-spammy methods of promoting one's blog?

[Christian Knudsen]

By posting threads on forums asking how other people promote their blogs (while mentioning your own blog)... Oh, wait.

[dongle]

:/

I've seen some people here post articles from their blogs in the forums with a link to their blog – i'm not sure how I feel personally about republishing content in a forum.

A more specific question would be, um, what's the best way to communicate with media to get my blog posts mentioned on other blogs? How best to engage with other blogs for point/counterpoint type stuff on subjects? I've had some trouble interfacing with the games space (was in the academic space before).

[Christian Knudsen]

Well, to provide a more serious reply, I'd say the best way to interact with other blogs is through the blogs' comment sections. Comment on the subject being discussed and perhaps link to a counter argument on your own blog?

But I think promotion is only one third of the ingredients required for a successful blog (or any other web content, actually). The other two are content and longevity. You need something that the reader will find interesting and return to your blog for (and can't get from a hundred other blogs). And you need to have had your blog for a while. Most of us don't have the cash for big marketing campaigns, so we rely on word of mouth and links to our blogs. Both things grow gradually over time along with an increase in number of readers. I see you've had your blog for three months. That's still very new and I don't think you should worry too much about "promoting" it. Just keep making interesting content and mention it when appropriate.

[ichbin]

Increasing your visitor numbers for your blog is hard and time consuming, but the rewards are apparent.

Some of the basics to keep in mind.

• Meta-tags. Learn to love them. Most blogs come with a "Tags" section of the article you're writing. Fill those out with a fair amount of tags that pertain to the article.
• Linking. Whenever you name-drop another company/name/practically anything and anyone with a website, link it. It increases relevancy when people use search terms for that website.
• Twitter and facebook. Make sure they are all posting in unison. My po-dunk blog shoots a status message and a tweet auto-magically after I post.
• Relevance. Make sure your website is staying on topic to it's purpose. Car blogs don't talk about computers, development blogs don't talk about personal lives (Generally). Keep the same topic and your relevance will increase in searches.
• Comments/forums. Adds content without you really having to do it yourself.
• Posting images. Make sure you include the "alt" for images. Search engine spiders only know how to read text. The ALT allows spiders to "read" your images.

After those basic steps, make sure you keep up adding content. No content, no visitors.

If you aren't using google analytics, I would suggest that right away. Helps you figure out which keywords are working and where traffic is coming from.

Don't try and be sneaky by posting random private articles with the same word over and over again. Generally speaking, if you try and "Play" the system, google will send you to what's called google hell.

If you don't want your domain to ALWAYS be at the last page of every search, I'd suggest you play by the rules.

Pretty much, if you wouldn't want to see it as a reader, then don't do it as a publisher.

Physical promotions are a little different.

I've done some physical promotions, but for the most part they mean essentially nothing unless you're offering a service or product. Dev blogs or general blogs never do well with physical marketing. Ends up just being a waste of time.

But, some ways to help physically,

• Meetup. Join meetup.com and just start heading to events and talking a lot about your website.
• Business cards. I personally believe that people should have personal business cards with them always. It's a great way to keep track of people you meet.
• If you're willing to spend a crazy amount of time towards this, attend seminars, conventions, and trades shows.
• Join local communities and clubs (Whether they are online or not, doesn't really matter)

This is all I can really think of at the moment.   

Hope this helps.

[Evan Balster]

I'd say providing compelling content is most important.  I don't know too much about this stuff, but I haven't needed to 'fish' for publicity for my own current project.  People have mostly liked it enough to mention it themselves.

Maybe toss out a nice, free prototype-y game now and then as a means of stirring interest.

[dongle]

Yeah, I think you nailed it – releasing prototypes to build an audience for the final product makes a lot of intuitive sense and seems non-spammy since each pre-release is low-stakes.

[Christian Knudsen]

There's also an added benefit to releasing early prototype/development versions of your game; you're pretty much getting a large group of testers for free. Not only can the players comment on gameplay issues, they can find bugs and help you test your game on various platforms. I couldn't imagine making any game (free or commercial) without feedback from players during development.

[theweirdn8]

By posting threads on forums asking how other people promote their blogs (while mentioning your own blog)... Oh, wait.

Clever(with a strange accent)
 

[bateleur]

Yeah, I think you nailed it – releasing prototypes to build an audience for the final product makes a lot of intuitive sense and seems non-spammy since each pre-release is low-stakes.

Also just publishing occasional video clips is good. If what you're working on is exciting enough to spread virally then you won't even need to spend time marketing your blog.

(Not that prototypes are bad, but most of the gaming blogs I read don't release any and it doesn't make me any less inclined to read them.)

[Brice]

Hi dongle, nice to meet you!  You might be referring to my posts when you said you've seen others repro'ing their posts on forums.    I actually didn't find that to be very effective.  It didn't generate very many pageviews, and it also didn't really rub me the right way in terms of feeling too much like shameless self-promotion -- I wouldn't want to overdo it and get people upset.  So while it was a good experiment for me, after having done it I wouldn't recommend it.

The biggest thing that's been beneficial to me is developing actual relationships with editors of other big blogs.  Gamasutra, Bytejacker, TIGSource main page, or any blog for that matter all love posting things that their readers will think are awesome.  So if you come to them with something that they would love to post, then you're doing them a favor.  Just don't be impolite or spammy.

I'd also highly recommend getting Google Analytics if you haven't already.  It's free and you can track incoming traffic and page views.  Absolutely necessary if you're looking to grow your site.

Best of luck!

[dantheman363]

Increasing your visitor numbers for your blog is hard and time consuming, but the rewards are apparent.

Some of the basics to keep in mind.

• Meta-tags. Learn to love them. Most blogs come with a "Tags" section of the article you're writing. Fill those out with a fair amount of tags that pertain to the article.
• Linking. Whenever you name-drop another company/name/practically anything and anyone with a website, link it. It increases relevancy when people use search terms for that website.
• Twitter and facebook. Make sure they are all posting in unison. My po-dunk blog shoots a status message and a tweet auto-magically after I post.
• Relevance. Make sure your website is staying on topic to it's purpose. Car blogs don't talk about computers, development blogs don't talk about personal lives (Generally). Keep the same topic and your relevance will increase in searches.
• Comments/forums. Adds content without you really having to do it yourself.
• Posting images. Make sure you include the "alt" for images. Search engine spiders only know how to read text. The ALT allows spiders to "read" your images.

After those basic steps, make sure you keep up adding content. No content, no visitors.

If you aren't using google analytics, I would suggest that right away. Helps you figure out which keywords are working and where traffic is coming from.

Don't try and be sneaky by posting random private articles with the same word over and over again. Generally speaking, if you try and "Play" the system, google will send you to what's called google hell.

If you don't want your domain to ALWAYS be at the last page of every search, I'd suggest you play by the rules.

Pretty much, if you wouldn't want to see it as a reader, then don't do it as a publisher.

Physical promotions are a little different.

I've done some physical promotions, but for the most part they mean essentially nothing unless you're offering a service or product. Dev blogs or general blogs never do well with physical marketing. Ends up just being a waste of time.

But, some ways to help physically,

• Meetup. Join meetup.com and just start heading to events and talking a lot about your website.
• Business cards. I personally believe that people should have personal business cards with them always. It's a great way to keep track of people you meet.
• If you're willing to spend a crazy amount of time towards this, attend seminars, conventions, and trades shows.
• Join local communities and clubs (Whether they are online or not, doesn't really matter)

This is all I can really think of at the moment.   

Hope this helps.

This is some really good advice, thanks!

[namre]

I've made a moderately successful blog a few years back and I found out that if you have good content that people like to read or view, then more visitors will come eventually. However, it couldn't hurt if you give it a little push to make the visitors come faster

The most simplest way is to just visit other blogs and forums and leaving useful comments while avoiding to sound like a spammer. You could also try search engine optimization which really helps increase the visitors, which in turn, you could convert to regular readers. Google SEO to find out more about this.

Again, good content is nice. Provide tutorials or give away stuff. Or you could make videos because videos have a higher rate of being passed on.

Hope this helps.

[krasimir]

I got 55,000 visitors on the day I hit Digg's homepage (game category).

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

you're thanking a spambot for its advice, dantheman363

[increpare]

you're thanking a spambot for its advice, dantheman363

Spambots know about the durr emoticon?

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

maybe it was a hand-written spambot; regardless, it was someone's first post and it feels as if they signed up just to promote their own site (meetup.com). maybe it isn't, but i'm generally suspicious of people who only post once and promote a website in their post. it also feels like that reply could have been posted to anyone asking about traffic anywhere, it wasn't tailored to this specific situation, so it feels like a form letter style.

[moi]

In any case it's real good information.
Apart from that, the #1 way to pimp your blog is to create good content

[Igor Hardy]

What are other effective, non-spammy methods of promoting one's blog?

I think this is a very similar question to "What are other effective, non-spammy methods of promoting one's freeware no-budget game?", only much more difficult. There seems to be a far stronger relation between quality and popularity in case of games than in case of blogs (especially ones devoted to niche topics), so you can do very little unless you're a marketing genius.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think there's little correlation to either, but i think that a popular blog has at least *some* good posts, even if most of the posts are bad. whereas an unpopular blog frequently has no good posts at all.

the reason for this is i feel that the #1 reason a blog becomes popular is through a series of 'hit' posts. if a post becomes a hit, it attracts a lot of views. some % of them will stay on as regular readers. so the most popular blogs are those that have had a few very big 'hit' posts, even if the rest of their content isn't as excellent.

an example of this is steve pavlina's blog on self development. it was pretty small until he got a few hit posts (that were linked to from all the other popular blogs in the self-development blogsophere). after that, the people who found his blog through those links stayed on.

in other words, the growth of traffic of a blog (or a site, for that matter) isn't a gradual increase of a slope, it's usually a series of steps, like a staircase (although not an exact analogy because at the beginning of each 'step' is a spike).


so it's like (in views per day)

10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-10-1000-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-100-10000-1000-1000-1000-1000-1000-1000-1000-1000-1000