Some Great Ways to Promote Are Already Out There

[Billy West]

JapanSoc is a great way to promote your Japan blog to good core group of bloggers who will stop by your blog on a regular basis and read and comment.

For big traffic, StumbleUpon has been gold for me, but also just good old-fashioned networking has helped. Leaving a comment on a popular topic on a popular blog can sometimes bring good, consistent traffic for a week. Lots of people are either too lazy, or are short on social skills and are looking for quick, easy ways to get big stats. However, I think too many people ignore or fail to understand the importance of true social networking.

[Nick]

StumbleUpon does send huge amounts of traffic, but it's not very "sticky". If you get 2,000 hits on a story from StumbleUpon, you'd expect a lot of extra comments or new rss subscribers, but such increases are sadly quite minimal, at least in my experience. However, there's no denying it pulls in traffic by the boatload.

Commenting is good, and also look out for Top Commentator lists, too. People are always curious about the top commentators on a site.

Completely agree with your last statements. For me, social networking is about the people, not the stats. If you focus on the people, the stats tend to follow naturally.

Another way to promote is with pingbacks. Link to related articles and you'll usually get a pingback in their comment areas, which some of their readers will follow. You'll also bring a smile to the blogger you linked to because everybody loves attention.

[Tori Johnson - Teenage Mutant Lab Rat]

And with the pingback that blogger sees that your site exists and has some relation to his/her blog. I'd say a blogger trafficking your site is worth 10 regular visitors at least because they could end up promoting you with a link back.

Top commentators... that reminds me, I need to put a recent comments widget on dailyj

[Nick]

Don't forget you said that, Tori! You can set it to any number of Top Commentators you like, and there are people out there who will consistently comment to get in and stay in that list... like me!

[Tori Johnson - Teenage Mutant Lab Rat]

I just put recent comments on DailyJ.
(and finally I am using widgets)
I want to put top commentators on their instead but I have to go find it as it is not included on the widget page.

I need to upgrade the blog and redo the theme too... (still using 2.3!)

[Tori Johnson - Teenage Mutant Lab Rat]

Hi Billy, thanks for joining!

I couldn't have said it better. networking is the key.
One of my favourite blogs, 45n5, did a really good post about growing readership.
He talked about "winning your blogs 'popularity contest'" and blogging as if google traffic didn't exist. To do that you have to go out and connect with people.
http://www.45n5.com/permalink/build-websites-like-search-engine-tra...

[Nick]

I avoided Twitter for such a long time but I'm really enjoying it now. It's so quick and easy, and I've got it embedded in my blog for people to read so it takes the pressure off needing to update my blog all the time.

I encourage you guys to sign up for Twitter, even if it' just to keep up-to-date on everybody else's news and not write stuff yourself.

http://twitter.com/nick_ramsay

[Tori Johnson - Teenage Mutant Lab Rat]

I've been avoiding it too. (I have an account but don't use it)
I'm trying to use my time better.

For keeping up with other people it sounds useful though. It might actually save some time.