30 Days to a Better Blog: Connect With Other Bloggers

You’re whipping your blog into shape, and now it’s time to connect with other bloggers! The blogiverse is an amazing place of camaraderie and friendship.

Most niches and industries are very open to working with their fellow bloggers to network, share links, and even guest post. The more bloggers you work with and help, the more you’ll find they are willing to reciprocate.

Remember that competitive analysis you did? Those blogs are the a great place to start, but also consider researching other intermediate and smaller blogs. They may have more time to respond to your comments and work with you further.

Once you have a list of at least 10 blogs, here’s the best way to connect with those bloggers:

• Research the blogger. Take a look at their blog. Read their About page. Look at how they respond to comments. Once you’ve done all this, you’ll have something worthwhile to contribute.li>Research the blog’s followers. How do they interact with each other? Is there a lot of humor involved or do they keep it professional? You want to draw attention to yourself, but not in a bad way!
• Leave a worthwhile comment. Respond to a specific post or discussion. Leave your blog link as part of your name, but don’t link back to your own blog just yet. Once you’ve gotten into a dialogue, you can suggest reading further on your blog, but not in the initial contact.
• Follow up on your comment. Come back to the blog or subscribe to the comments so that you can continue a dialogue. Don’t ask a question and then not respond or thank the blogger for answering.
• Email the blogger. After you’ve had a few discussions with the blogger, you can choose to contact them off their blog with any further items … do they want to join your blogroll? do they want to participate in a blogfest? the opportunities are endless.

Now make this a part of your routine. I have a list of blogs in my RSS feed that I try to browse and comment on – at least on a weekly basis. How do you connect with other bloggers?