When I created Technically Easy I was new to blogging and had no idea what was involved in generating traffic. As I did my research I came across some Web sites that many bloggers use on a regular basis.
In this post I provide a few of the free Web sites that you should join to help you manage your blog and generate traffic.
The Web Sites
FeedBurner – Every blog generates an RSS (or atom) feed that is sent to their subscribers to keep them up to date. A feed is simply an XML text document that is read by applications called readers to display the latest posts to a blog’s subscribers. FeedBurner takes this one step further and allows you to customize the look of your feed, such as adding a logo and advertising. I highly recommend that you sign up with FeedBurner and start using it as soon as possible.
Technorati – Technorati is a popular site that helps rank thousands of blogs based on how much authority a blog has. Each time a blog links to yours, you gain some authority. The more authority you have the better your blog is ranked. This is useful to see which blogs have linked to you. Although Technorati won’t generate much traffic, other sites use this ranking as a means for evaluating your blog.
BlogCatalog – One of the two big social networks geared towards bloggers. If you participate in some of the discussions, join groups and network with other bloggers on BlogCatalog, this can generate decent amounts of traffic for your blog.
MyBlogLog – Along with BlogCatalog, MyBlogLog is the other big blogger social network. With this site, you can join communities of other blogs, leave messages for others and even have it manage your blog stats for you.
Entrecard – This is perhaps the single easiest way to generate traffic for you new blog. Many bloggers don’t like the traffic that is generated by Entrecard, but for new blogs it can generate subscribers and visitors very quickly. I won’t go into details on how it works, but you should definitely check it out.
Website Babble – This is the first real forum that I actively participate in, although not as much recently. If you are new to blogging, Web site management, or anything to do with Web sites I highly recommend you sign up for this forum. Many of the members of this forum have been through many ups and downs about creating a Web site and they are more than happy to help you.
Summary
I have provided several Web sites that you should look into joining if you have started start your first blog. This is by no means a complete list as there are many others that you can join. The one important factor, however, that will help increase the traffic to your blog is to actively participate in the Web sites.