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10 ways a blog can bring more people to your online portfolio...via.

Having enjoyed writing about things that interest me on blogs now and in the past, the various merits of using one as a means to bring people to your online portfolio/personal site/work are evident.

If you are going to spend time writing for, and adding content to a blog, you’ll know that it takes time and a bit of a push sometimes. Therefore, you’ll want that time to be well spent, and you’ll want people coming to it see your work as well.

Once you have provided an obvious link to your work on your blog, you can use the following ideas and methods to boost the number of people coming to your blog, and ultimately, your personal site.

1. Linking to and from influential blogs in your niche

Use forums in your niche, blog searches and directories and search engines to find influential blogs in your niche.

Write to the writers of those blogs, introducing your blog and get to an agreement whereby you swap links, placing their link in your blogroll and they placing yours on their blog. Make sure these contacts are done tactfully and that a certain level of rapport is built into your email correspondence.

2. Running a competition

These are a great way of creating buzz, bringing higher than average levels of new people to your site, if done well. Competitions are useful for keeping readers attached to your blog as well, owing to people checking up on how they are doing with regards to the competition.

3. Lists

Having a clear, useful, fun and/or interesting list is often a good way of attracting people to your site. They can be straightforward and easy on the eye.

Good lists will often be promoted virally by people who find it useful through social media sites, for example. Use magazines and other sites as inspiration.

4. Interviews

Interviewing key people in your area, celebrities and other popular people will often attract interested people to your site and add credibility to your blog. You’ll be surprised how often popular and talented people will be happy to answer a few questions for your blog, particularly if it brings a bit of exposure their way too.

5. Resources

Put together a post filled with useful resources and references centered on a particular topic. This often doesn’t require huge amounts of research if you look in the right places and mix things up a bit. People will come back to these lists and bookmark your site if it is a good one.

6. Commenting and trackbacking

Join in with the discussions and giving feedback on other related blogs, and make sure you leave your URL with each comment, either to your personal site, or your blog.

Link to plenty of external posts within your blog by leaving a trackback with those sites. Many people will do the same in return, bringing traffic to your blog.

7. Freebies

Giving away something of value on your blog, will get noticed and will attract people to your site. It’s also a great way to help people join your mailing list.

8. Tools

Creating a useful, newsworthy, fun or simply cool tool will bring traffic and ideally viral traffic back to your blog.

An example is maybe a colour chooser tool that sits on your blog. If you’re a bit of a geek with code or designing apps, you could make something really attractive for your site.

9. Submission to blog directories

Submit your blog to directories like Technorati, Blogcatalog and Blogged for extra exposure. People can favourite your blog and find your blog through a search using those directories. Links to your blogs also benefit your search engine ranking.

After writing each post, make sure you register for and submit your blog to blog and ping services like Technorati, Ping-o-Matic and Pingler. Also make sure you submit your blog to various RSS feeds using Feed Burner or FeedAgg.

Another good place to submit your posts to is to a blog carnival. These are where people find blog posts related to a topic, which are posted altogether under one heading for people to read all at once. The place to go for this is blogcarnival.com.

10. Quizzes

Hosting a quiz, survey, or personality test on your blog tend to be very popular with web users and will get people talking about your site.