Blog promotion is a necessary component to accumulating readers.  In addition to using SEO and building relationships with other bloggers in your niche, you can use some of these ideas to attract visitors to your site.

Join Directories

You can submit your blog to a directory.  These can help you gain traffic.  Some people swear by them, others put less of an importance on them.  They are not used as much as they were in the past, but they are worth a try.

Directories can also help you find other bloggers in your niche, and can help those other bloggers find you and, possibly, approach you for a link.  Directories are usually organized by category, and different directories will have different features.  Some may be pickier than others, for example, but you know that the blogs on pickier directories are successful, noteworthy blogs.

Here is a great article about different blog directories you can submit your blog to.

Use Give-Aways

I’ve seen a lot of bloggers – especially fashion or shopping blogs – with give-aways.  They’ll hold contests of some sort and the winner will receive some product.  Of course, you’ll have to pay for this somehow.  If you can’t afford to give away products, you can always make them yourself.  Blog layout themes, for example, are one popular give away, and you can have the users link back to you.

Use Branding

Branding makes your blog unique and distinctive.  For example, a specific logo design that you always use, even if your layout changes, is a form of branding.  Also having a specific message or slogan helps you brand your blog, site or product.

Branding is mostly used for products, but there’s no reason you can’t apply it to your blog.  Leo Babauta has some great points about how it’s okay – and in fact, a good thing – to use advertising techniques for your blog and how to use branding effectively for your blog.

Craving more information?  Stay tuned for a follow up post with more ideas, or read a previous entry about 5 Steps to Promote Your Blog.