I just read a great post from Seth Godin (via Problogger).  His post was about the power of recommendation. 

He wrote about posting excerpts from his new book last month and also giving a recommendation for a book by author Garr Reynolds.  He built a Squidoo page about that book with an affiliate link to Amazon. 

Guess which book has gotten more sales?  His book or Garr’s book? 

Seth checked his stats and it shows that he’s sold more of Garr’s book than his own book.

What people say about you is much more important than what you say about yourself.

There’s a lot of talk about self-promotion but it’s a lot more beneficial and effective when other bloggers promote you.

When people talk about you and especially when they recommend you, you gain credibility, mindshare, and exposure.

So, how do you get other people to start talking about you?

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When bloggers think of marketing, they usually think of blog commenting or social media marketing.

However, don’t forget about forum marketing.

Forum marketing has many benefits. If other marketing methods are not working for you, give forum marketing a shot.

I think the learning curve for social media marketing is steeper than forum marketing. Also, you’ll often reach a more targeted audience with forums than with social media sites.

Forum marketing is similar to blog commenting. It allows you to reach a targeted audience. However, forum marketing has an advantage over blog commenting because you can start a forum thread in the topic of your choosing. In blog commenting, you’re constrained by the topic of the blog post.

Tips

Here are some tips for improving your forum marketing.

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About 2 weeks ago, I wrote about marketing without spamming. One of my points was that networking is an essential part of marketing. If you don’t have a relationship with the bloggers you’re marketing to, then you could be classified as a spammer. For example, if you promote your content to a blogger out of the blue, they might wonder, “Who are you?” and “Why are you spamming me?”

Blog commenting is a great way to presell yourself and your content while also building friendships with other bloggers. Here are a couple tips to consider.

Comment early. Try one of the first 5 to comment on a post because those commenters get noticed more than the later commenters. You’ll get more traffic to your blog. The blogger will notice you over the other commenters if he receives many comments per post.

Leave an insightful comment. Too many comments are short and don’t add much value. It’s okay to leave a comment like “Awesome post. Thanks for sharing.” However, most of your comments should add value to the post and directly engage the post in an insightful way. By leaving good comments, you will brand yourself as someone who knows what he’s talking about.

Pick a blog that you enjoy reading. It will a lot easier to leave good comments if you comment on a blog that you enjoy reading.

Comment on posts that are closely related to your blog. If you have a Ford Mustang blog and want to comment on a general car blog, leave comments especially on the Mustang related posts. Also, other Mustang car blogs like this one are great places to leave comments.

Watch your stats. If you’re not getting a lot of traffic from your comments, it may be time to target another blog. Don’t just look at unique visitors. Check out the bounce rate and pageviews, too. Blog A may send less visitors than blog B. However, blog A’s visitors may actually be visiting more pages than blog B’s visitors. More pageviews can translate into subscribers and a higher conversion rate.

After a couple insightful comments especially if the blogger responded to them, feel free to contact the blogger directly and promote your best content. Make sure your content actually relates to his blog. Also, link out a couple times to the blogger to increase your success rate of getting a link and a positive mention.

Which blogs should you comment on? Our blog directory can help you with this. We have a lot of blogs and they’re ranked by 3 metrics: overall, strength, and momentum. For more information about these three metrics, check out our about page.

I personally like using the momentum metric, because you can find blogs that don’t have a huge readership base yet they are growing quickly. The problem with networking with bloggers who have big audiences is they are often hard to befriend because of their fame. It’s hard to get noticed in midst of their many comments and emails. However, blogs with a high momentum metric are often times smaller blogs that are on the rise. What better time to network with a blogger than when they have a relatively small audience, but at the same time, are growing their readership very quickly?

For example, if you are a celebrity blogger, check out the top momentum celeb blogs. Then, pick one like Pop Crunch and begin leaving comments. If you are a tech blogger, check out the top momentum tech blogs. You can then scan the blogs on the list and pick a blog to target like The Techdirt Blog.

Also, don’t forget to submit your blog if you haven’t already. Other bloggers are browsing the directory for other blogs in their niche. If you haven’t submitted your blog, those bloggers won’t be able to find you.

Feedback

Feel free to share your favorite blog commenting tip.

If you want to have long-term success in the blogging game, you need to have attention. I just found this very relevant post. It’s entitled Links or Content? Nope, the Issue is Attention. In this post, Aaron Wall tackles the question that webmasters often debate: Which is more important, links or content? However, he argues that attention trumps both of those things. Here’s what he says:

The debate is flawed. Links or content alone are just one type of asset. You might be able to profit from either for a while, but ultimately the real measure of relevancy and staying power is attention.

I think he’s right. The internet is getting more crowded. More people are trying to make money online. More bloggers are learning internet marketing skills. Here is a list of over 100 make money online bloggers. I think most of these blogs were started less than a year ago. Information is easy to produce. Big offline publishers with massive amounts of quality content are starting to publish their content online. Therefore, attention is the most valuable resource right now.

You can have the best content but if no one knows about it, how will you make money or gain readership? You can be a marketing genius, but if your content doesn’t capture people’s attention, your marketing will be inefficient and ineffective. You can be the best link builder, but a blogger who has more attention than you will steal your rankings in the long-term because their attention will get them links faster than you can build them.

So, think of ways to get noticed. Write content that causes people to pay attention to you. Promote your blog in such a way that people don’t forget you. Don’t stop building links but also get attention because that is the best link building strategy.

Also, here are two principles that can help.

• Be bold.
• Focus. Don’t multi-task so much. Instead, “single task”. Much of the content and marketing that gets attention is well-planned and took much concentration and focused effort.

Hello, my name is Dee. I work as a full time in-house SEO for Sea Waves. Also, I blog part time at Net Business Blog. I’ll be blogging once a week here. More specifically, I’ll be giving tips that will help you market your blog. Subscribe to our feed and you won’t miss out.

Today let’s talk about marketing without spamming. What’s the difference? How can you keep your marketing from becoming spammy?

Here are some equations that might help you understand the difference between spam and marketing.

Promoting low quality/irrelevant content = spam

Promoting with no prior relationship = spam

Promoting with good content and networking = good marketing

Good blog marketing is not just about letting people know about your content. You also need networking and good content.

Why Good Content?

People will share high quality content. But bad content, they’ll make fun of or ignore. For example, you promote one of your posts to popular bloggers. Popular bloggers are known for having quality content. For those bloggers to link to you, you must have quality content that their readers will enjoy. So, promote your best stuff and aim to increase the quality of your content.

Tips for Producing Good Content

Think about what people in your niche like to talk about. Would they share your content with their friends? Ask yourself if other bloggers would freely link to your posts. The key here is creating content that stands out from the crowd. There are many ways to do this. Here are 3 of those ways.

1. Cover the areas in your niche that no one else is covering.
Example: Follow the popular blogs in your niche and write about an important subject they’re not covering at the present time.

2. Write about your niche in a unique angle.
Example: Whenever you post a news item, add your opinions and views.

3. Format your blogs in a creative way.
Examples: Take quality content from your blog and other blogs and aggregate them in a organized list post. Also, make sure to have usable, clean, up-to-date blog design.

Finally, your content needs to be relevant to your audience. Therefore, know your audience well in order to give them what they consider useful/important/entertaining.

Why Networking?

Think about some blogs where you’d like to have a link. For example, if you have a basketball blog, you’d definitely want a link from TrueHoop? If you have a copywriting blog, you can get a lot of traffic from a link on Copyblogger. How would you go about pursuing these juicy links?

You could email them your best content. However, popular bloggers are used to getting promotional emails. Some of these promotional emails come from their friends. Hmmm. Are the popular bloggers more likely to link to their friends or you, a stranger? We are social creatures by nature. We like to support our friends more than random strangers. So, you have a much better chance of getting links on popular blogs by being friendly and networking.

Networking Tips

Here are some practical networking tips.

Think of networking like building offline friendships. Small talk first.

• Think of networking like building offline friendships. Small talk first.
• Introduce yourself to other bloggers by emailing them. Don’t promote any of your posts. Give them your blog URL and tell them a little bit about yourself. Ask them a small, relevant question.
• Leave insightful comments.
• Link out to quality content. Bloggers like trackbacks.
• Do interviews.
• Offer to guest post.
• Target bloggers who like to link out rather than the more “isolated” bloggers.

Conclusion

There is a lot more to say about quality content and networking so stick around. I’ll give more practical examples in later posts. Until then, reevaluate your networking efforts and the quality of your content. If you do this, you’ll be on your way to increasing the effectiveness of your marketing.