How to get more action at your blog

I was very pleased to read Guy Kawasaki’s excellent post The 120 Day Wonder:  How to Evangelize a Blog.  In typical Kawasaki fashion, he outlines 10 concrete, specific steps you can take to get more action, links and buzz going about your blog.

I had lamented in What do the "A List" bloggers have that I don’t? that Guy’s very first post garnered 21 trackbacks and 32 comments.  Now he shares that he spread the word about his new blog to his mailing list of 10,000.  That sure explains some of the instant action!  Not to mention, of course, that he has a very well-established and respected presence in the entrepreneurial world, as well as a loyal following from his books.

Some of my favorite ideas from his article:

"1. Think “book” not “diary.” First, a bit of philosophy: my suggestion is that you think of your blog as a "product." A good analogy is the difference between a diary and a book. When you write a diary, it contains your spontaneous thoughts and feelings. You have no plans for others to read it. By contrast, if you write a book, from day one you should be thinking about spreading the word about it."

"4. Collect links for blog rolling. This is something I wish I had done on day one, but I was totally ignorant of this linking thing. If I had to do it over again, I would look for all the interesting blogs that cover similar topics to my blog. Then, on day one I would have blog rolled them all and ensured that  Technorati pinged my blog, so that the bloggers  might find out that I existed. I use Blogrolling.com to create my current blog roll."

"6. Supplement other bloggers with a followup entries. Read the blogs of the top fifty or so bloggers (using Technorati’s ranking is fine) and see if you have in-depth knowledge about their topics. Then instead of leaving the typical, dumb shiitake comment (“I think you’re an orifice who shouldn’t make money recommending products that you’ve invested in.”), craft a real essay that complements the blogger’s entry."

"10. Make it easy to join up. A blogger named Steve Nipper showed me the list about this. I had no idea what Feedburner and FeedBlitz did until he  told me about them. The bottom line is that you should enable your readers to get to your blog in multiple ways. It’s no different than distributing physical products through multiple channels. "

One of the things I like the best about the blogging world is that many smart, insightful people like Guy are willing to open up and share what they learn about building a business.  I think it demystifies the whole process and makes us little fish gain confidence that we can indeed jump out of the fishbowl and into the big ocean.