What a difference an hour makes
I know what you’re thinking – where am I going to find an hour?
A whole 60 minutes…I mean, that’s just….unthinkable.
But if you can spare an hour every few days, I guarantee that you will see some sort of increase in your traffic.
How can I make that promise?
Easy, I use this method personally to ensure the success of my blogs, articles and anything else I get deeply involved in.
So what’s this hour?
Well – it can be an hour a day, or an hour every two days – any less than that, and you’ll run the risk of putting it off completely.
What you need is a blog, Google, some communities and a bit of braveness to comment on other people’s blogs, forums, posts and networking conversations, and then…
Well, first, start writing posts. For other people to actually want to visit your blog, you have to have posts – and I don’t just mean a couple of lines about how dumb you feel writing this or whining that you’ve got the cold, your husband called you fat, and you’re having a lousy time cause your lousy customers don’t buy your perfect product, I’m talking professional, informative and if you can manage it witty. And once you’ve got a few posts, start exploring.
Blogging should only take between 10 minutes and half an hour – and a regularly updated blog of a couple of times a week only takes out two hours of the three – five you could potentially set aside to work on your blogging profile.
Spend a couple of minutes every hour looking at and book marking blogs. Read them – spend time commenting on them. Look at what’s garnering comments and what’s being flatly ignored, but don’t get hung up over it. Find some ‘master’ Bloggers in your field of expertise and read their stuff too.
You don’t need to go overboard but your ‘few minutes’ here and there WILL soon add up to an hour, along with your blog posts.
And when all else fails, Google has a blog search engine in beta that you can use to find yet more blogs to comment on.
And what’s the point of all this?
Well – as long as you’re not spamming ‘Hey come read my blog its cool (URL)’ and actually add meaning to a conversation most of the time or add a new dimension to the discussion (it IS ok to respectfully disagree with people 
) then Google will pick up your URL, you’ll get rating and if you’re interesting enough other people MAY just click through on the same ‘must explore and network more’ kick that you’re on.
Join and explore the directories that others are on (they are usually buttons with names on them) – comment on the blogs on there – explore further – collect the blogs that really mean something to YOU- they MAY add you back.
And once you’re regularly posting to your blog, use feed burner anywhere you can – its easy to set up, and will allow you to portably take your posts to any message board that allows HTML.
Be creative, inventive and most of all, have fun with your blog - its not the end of the world if its not awesomely popular, but as a tool, it can be a powerful vehicle for any message.
This article is available at: What a difference an hour makes
Visit D Kai Wilson's book site at Books By Kai
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