With growing interest in blogging as a means of online promotion and branding, a lot of marketers are starting blogs to promote their opinions, products, books and services.

But a blog is like a website. "Write and they will come" isn't exactly a magic formula to bring in traffic by boatload.

If you need to promote your website in order to build traffic to it, you need to promote your blog as well.

Here are some ways you can become a well-read and influential blogger.

1. Write Posts That People Will Want To Read

This should be common sense, but many marketers tend to forget that their readers are real people and that you need to use principles of online copywriting to make your headlines and copy interesting to your readers.

If you write posts that people enjoy reading, they will reward you by returning to your blog regularly.

Make your posts conversational, pithy and topical. Keep them short and stick to one topic per post.

Write often and regularly so that both readers and search engines visit your blog more often.

2. Optimize Your Posts for Search Engines

I cover this topic in detail in my article on "Search Engine Optimization For Blogs" http://www.blog-maniac.com/blog-seo.htm

But here are most important rules to follow to get your posts listed for keywords of your choice.

* Make sure your blog URL contains primary keyword you want to optimize for

* Use your primary keywords in title of your post

* Use your secondary keywords in body of your post

* Use your keywords in anchor text of links in body of your posts

3. Submit Your Blog and RSS Feed To Directories

If you publish a blog you should submit your blog and RSS feed to big directories like Yahoo and Dmoz, as well as numerous blog directories and search engines.

Here is best list I've found of places to submit your feed or blog, compiled by Luigi Canali De Rossi, who writes under pseudonym Robin Good.

Best Blog Directory And RSS Submission Sites http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Another list of sites to submit your Blog. http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm

4. Ping The Blog Services

This article is for 97% of webmasters who aren’t aware of a particularly powerful JV partner who already exists, and is willing to work with you. Before I reveal all, let me just check…..

Like me, I would image you’d be happy if:

• Your JV partner’s site gets huge traffic. • The vast majority of page views are by targeted traffic. • You can create links wherever YOU like from their site. • You can start now. There’s no delay in setting up JV. • The JV continues as long as you want. • It costs you pennies to set up and run.

Does that sound like it’s what you’re looking for in a JV?

If so, welcome to eBay. You’re new joint venture partner.

But I Thought….

“eBay?” I hear you ask, “Isn’t eBay just an auction site?”

Well, it certainly started as an auction site. Today, eBay is an ecommerce phenomenon.

• eBay’s 1.5 billion page views puts it in sixth place on Alexa traffic rankings. Ahead of Amazon, AOL and CNN. • eBay members make 79 million targeted searches for items each day. • There are 35,000 categories within which to place items for sale. • There are eBay auction sites in 27 countries. • eBay has 125 million registered users. • 40,000 new members join eBay each day.

What we have here is a hugely successful internet business with massive traffic. And, thanks to eBay’s sophisticated categorization and searching mechanisms, traffic is totally targeted.

More importantly, there are several smart ways to drive eBay’s targeted traffic to your own website. All of these clever methods add up to what I call eBay Traffic Funnel.

Does it work? Well, I sell a communications product from my website. I run 5 simple auctions in appropriate categories using principles of eBay Traffic Funnel. Each auction costs me 30 cents and runs for a week. I get around 300 targeted leads from these auctions to my website every week. Not bad for one dollar fifty!