WOW! It’s December already and the New Year is right around the corner. What does this mean for bloggers? What does this mean for marketers? It’s simple really. It’s time to take a fresh stab at getting more readers to your blog. Here are some tips you can follow to help you get readers and keep them in 2009.

Just like anything else, you have to start with the source; your blog. Here are a few things you can do to make your readers stay and stick.

Be The RSS King: RSS feeds have become a must have on every blog. Readers who subscribe to your RSS are likely to stick. RSS subscribers are those who have read your topics and want to keep updated about every little change to the blog that occurs. Make sure your RSS button is well within sight and is easy to access.

Design/Brand: YES! First impressions count. You want to give the BEST first impression possible. If you’re serious about blogging, you need to have a design your readers enjoy. Find a designer that knows clean code, CSS, and good ad placement as well as get yourself a premium theme that’s unique to you.

If your budget can’t afford a custom theme, there are loads of free themes out there for WordPress powered blogs from sites like wpthemespot.com, topwpthemes.com, bloggingthemes.com, and Skinpress. Learn some designing and a bit of easy CSS to customize your theme to make it look professional and stand out.

Get on the SEO train: SEO and web optimizing; it seems to be the BIG topic weather it’s static sites or CMS blogging platforms. If you have a site, it needs to be SEO optimized. The simplest things matter with blogging SEO – make unique titles, rich headlines and keywords, enable trackback and ping functionality, and don’t forget to add tags to every blog post.

Contest: Who doesn’t like to win some free swag? Everyone likes free stuff. Start a contest on your blog. Offering a service or product as a contest on your blog is a good way to get existing readers to rush in.

Comments and more COMMENTS: Guess what? People pay attention to replies. If someone replies to your blog post, make it your duty to reply and pay attention to comments that need replies. If a reader posts a comment, they are very likely to come back to see a reply as long as you deliver.

It’s Your BLOG: You are the expert here. Be creative with every blog post. Try new things. Your blog is you. If you get noticed, you’ll likely get linked by other blogs.

Be Consistent: No advice, no ebook, no marketing guru can help you if you’re not consistent with creating your material. Returning readers like to have new fresh content, so keep on schedule and deliver.

Don’t give up, keep writing and learning so your readers keep coming back. Those are a few things you can do to improve quality content and keep readers coming back for more.

However, what if you want to get more new readers? Here are a few ways you can spread the word about your blog.

Blog directories: Submit you blog to blog directories. It’s as simple as Googling ‘blog directories’ to get started.

Article Directories: Guess what? All the blog content you’ve been working so hard on will go to waste if you don’t take precautions to keep them in circulation. Most bloggers make this mistake and forget about old blog posts. Don’t let posts get archived where no-one will read them. Submit them to article directories to keep traffic flowing to your old posts.

Free Stuff: Don’t have time to write a complete eBook? Turn some of your best blog posts into a free pdf document and give it away. Use this to attract more readers. Don’t forget to put a hyperlink of your site on the document to get them to come back for more.

Do interviews: Interview other bloggers. This is mutually beneficial – you will learn from them and get a few of their readers via a crossover effect while your readers get some great tips in the process, and they get to plug their site and get a few of your readers. Which leads in to our next part…

Get interviewed: It’s the same concept as doing interviews. It’s a win-win situation for both bloggers and their subscribers.

===========
This article is one of the “Featured Articles” in our Print Newsletter, “MDC Monthly.” This article was written by Lucius “Kern” Saltibus, one of the many expert marketers (like Stephen Pierce, Anik Singal, George Brown, and Omar Martin) that write for our newsletter along with Mike Filsaime. You can get a free trial copy shipped to your door by clicking here.

Mike Filsaime’s Official Blog, News, and Reviews

Technorati Tags: 2009, Blog, List