Everybody on the internet instant messages. Whether you have a Skype account or an MSN passport, you most likely talk to people via chat. However, few people realize how effective instant messaging clients can be for promoting your blog.
Your friends, family, and online contacts are ripe for the picking when it comes to building loyal blog readers. Because you talk on a regular basis, you’ve already built up their loyalty and trust, and chances are, they’re eager or at least interested to see what you’re working on. This is the secret to promoting your blog without actually advertising.
Ask About Projects — Discuss Your Achievements
When talking online, ask your friends about their recent projects, and how they’re going. Listen instinctively, and offer up some insight. Then talk about your recent achievements with your blog, and ask for feedback. Your friends and family will probably visit your blog, and might even get hooked on it while taking a look around.
Hook Them In
Nothing else works perfectly but flattery, take it from me. Always talk about their website first and tell them how great of a job you think they have done. In the end, somehow get them to ask you what your blog is. I feel you shouldn’t be direct all of the time. You can use phrases like:
- “You have a nice blog, the _______ is way nicer than it is at my blog!” — Point out something you think their blog is better in, and tell them that they have it better than you. This should hopefully spark their interest to see the thing they are better at, because it is an ego booster.
- “Wow! That _____ is nice. How did you do that? I want to do it on my blog.” — You don’t even have to be really interested, but just ask hem what they did to do something you like. Maybe you really want it on your blog too, and that’s great you found a new idea.
Just make them feel like they have done a great job, build up their ego a little bit, and I am sure they will ask for the link to your blog.
Give Them a Sneak Peak of Your New Stuff
Friends are always begging one another for favors and freebies, and that includes sneak peaks at developing websites. While you might be tempted to keep things under wraps, showing off your online contacts will help you get feedback and build anticipation for your blog. Offering up the occasional “sneak peak” to your online buddies is a great way to get people talking about your projects.
Before the new design here was launched, I did this method myself and I let a few of my contacts on MSN see a close to completed draft of it. I received some insanely helpful feedback, I was let it on bugs, and best of all: I made a few people feel special.
The last reason is not a joke, I believe I did make the few people I showed the sneak peak to special. I created trust between us by showing THEM something that would have a huge impact on my blog. The results?
- I got a lot of feedback on the design, and that helped me crush bugs and improve the design.
- I rewarded those who have been loyal to me and my blog by making them feel immensely important.
- I created friends that I still talk to everyday. They’re not just readers to me, their my new pals.
Ask for Help with an Idea
Similar to discussing achievements, asking for help when you’re stuck on an idea or task is a great way to promote as well. When your online contact is scouring your blog trying to help you, they may actually read the content out of curiosity, and become interested. In addition, your friends will see the help they gave you as an investment, and will visit your blog regularly to make sure everything is running smoothly.
There are two certain approaches you can go with here:
Be Blatant and Dish out your link (WRONG)
You can click on someone’s name, type your message and include the URL all in one message. I believe that to be the aggressive approach to this. Here is my message:
Hey, my header doesn’t align right in IE7, can you help? http://www.blogussion.com/
There are multiple reasons why i would not go this direction:
- You seem like and look like one of those spammers who give you viruses when you click the link.
- Rather than helpless, you seem like you are trying to force them to help you.
- It looks like you assume that they can help you, or assume that they already said “Yes, I can help you.”
The next approach I recommend you go with to look better.
Slowing Down Your Approach (RIGHT)
This time instead of just giving out the link, I will show you ways how to work towards it. Here is an image I made for this:
Slowing Down Your Approach and Creating Trust
MSN is a great way to promote your blog to interested potential readers. As long as you keep form spamming your contacts, and be sure to act appreciatively, there’s no better audience than one that consists of your friends.
22 Discussions
Nice article. I have never seen anyone post about this topic before. I should definitely consider using it.
Jake| Web Journey´s last blog ..10 Commandments For Bloggers and Webmasters
Thanks Jake, glad you saw something new!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
Hi Alex,
That’s a new approach. I never thought of using instant chat to promote my blog. I use Google Talk more than any other instant messaging softwares. I’ll give it a try and see what happens. Thanks for the post.
Mani Raj
Havoc Marketing
Nowadays everything has to be used as a marketing tool! :p
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
I’ve actually never heard about promoting a blog through instant messaging. The big hype has been the social networking sites like Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. It seems like your idea would be somewhat time consuming… but it just might work. I’ll have to try it out sometime.
Really, any kind of promoting will be time consuming. But I have to disagree with you about instant messaging marketing taking too long. Actually, I think it’s the quickest way to go.
Chances are you have friends who have similar blogs to yours, and if you ever do talk with them over MSN or something, you just post the link when appropriate. Spamming, as I said, isn’t something I would do though.
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
Woo… that’s a great way to communicate and draw potential readers in, seriously I never thought of using MSN to do anything with my blog…. Anyway I like your blog design, it looks clean and unique…
Yeah, it’s surprising that we use something every day and miss out on the true potential of it!
I appreciate the comments on the blog design here, it means a lot!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
I actually use this method all of the time. I talked to a bunch of people online, and once you build up friends, it’s a great way to launch new projects.
Corey Freeman @ Blogger Bear´s last blog ..Getting Traffic to Blogs Without Spending a Dime – I
Me too, I have never changed my MSN address and I literally have over 500 contacts on my list. Not all of them are active and not all of them talk to me still, but I still have quite a large list!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
Hi Alex,
I’m not really for engaging people through messenger to get more traffic… but if it was to be done, your method is fair enough.
The first one will definitely not work with me as I would tag you as a spammer and block you from ever contacting me again.
Nicolas Prudhon´s last blog ..Day 19: 21DSM – Outrank Your Competition
Ha, there’s no fooling you.
I guess some people are different, and it’s understandable to think so. I get a lot of spammers on my MSN nowadays and I think it’s reasonable to consider that approach as a spam method from one point of view.
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
Oh I so agree with this post.
I use Yahoo and MSN and I post the link to my blogs in my screen name.
I have been ‘buddies’ with people who abuse this though and have had to block a few for sending me the link to their new site every five minutes.
It’s ridiculous how many people take advantage of an IM client. I follow my own advice, and I wish more people on my contact list would do the same!
I think from now on whenever I get a spammer I am going to refer them to this article.
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
@Alex: Super, I almost never promote my blog on messenger. At max I will set my latest post URL in my status and friends will automatically visit, but these are definitely good ways to make them your ‘readers’.
I used to just throw the URL in as my status, and I was surprised how many people saw it.
I can’t believe I forgot to add that into this article! That’s what I do the most too!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
I do use Instant messaging yahoo to promote my blog
My friends are always asking questions about things that are already on my blog, so I just point them that way.
Alex´s last blog ..Weekend Round-Up 7/04
Sounds fair enough Alex, it’s smart and effective!
Alex´s last blog ..Big Changes Coming to Asnio + My Week Long Absence
Very interesting article! Thanks for this great tip/idea on how to promote your blog. I would have never thought to promote my blog using IM!
Karolyn´s last blog ..Technorati – Blog- New Cool Features
Hi,
Blog promotion is indeed most important topic in internet marketing.
Thanks nice review..what I generally use most to promote is my blog is article writing,social bookmarking and forums.
Getting more backlinks means you will get better ranking in google.
http://webmasterdailytips.com/2009/10/how-to-promote-your-blog/
You’ll notice certainly a great many help and advice like that to take on into consideration. That is really good point to bring up. I deliver the thinkings above as standard inspiration but evidently get questions just like the one you bring up where probably the most vital thing will likely be working in honest professional faith. I don?t know if genuinely practices have emerged close to things like that, but I am confident that your occupation is evidently identified as a fair game.
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