Blog Promotion From Within the Blog

Quite some time ago I read a recommendation that effective blog promotion starts from within the blog itself.  Well that advice made a lot of sense to me and since I was already using one method of inner blog promotion by linking to previously made posts I decided it was time to add a bit more.   After all I figured if I don't do a bit of self promotion why would anyone else promote my blogs.

Blog promotion from within includes:

• text links to previously made posts within posts
• LinkWithin - 3 graphic links to similar posts
• popular posts section with a blurb for each post - keep it to 3 or 4
• tag cloud

Essentially what you are doing is the same thing a sales person would do if selling you a bedroom set.  Once they had you interested in the bedroom set they would likely say "Do you need a set of lamps to go with the new look?"  The premise is the longer they keep you in the store the greater the chances of you buying more.  Well, the same thing applies to blogs.  If I catch your attention with a post title the chances of you staying to read a bit more by offering you a few reading choices increases considerably. 

What's nice about these methods is they really are not a blatant, in your face thing but more of an if you are interested thing.  I think it offers the readers more opportunity to explore my blogs.  However, I don't think all of these blog promotional tools work for every blog.  One or more may work well for some blogs but for other blogs relying on text links to previously made posts only may be the way to go while in other cases using only a tag cloud is a better choice.  Yet on other blogs all four methods might be quite effective.  The best way I've found to see what will be effective for one of my blogs is to add one of the promotional tools then monitor my traffic for a couple of weeks or so.  If the promotional tools decreases bounce rate or helps to increase comments on older post then I leave it alone and add another one depending on the style of the blog I'm adding it to.  I'm a bit picky that way as I like in internal blog promotion but don't want it to interfere with the overall design of that blog.

Garden Gnome
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