In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers.

These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is usually a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don’t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need an easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at http://blogcarnival.com/.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link: www.entrepreneurs-journey.com

There is more to successful marketing than slick campaigns and careful packaging. To truly lead a company and its product or products to the pinnacle of success, holistic measures must be taken. From the company’s image right down to the point of purchase advertising, everything must click with the consumer.

Marketing efforts that really resonate with consumers tend to reach them in ways that are seemingly subtle, but very powerful nonetheless. They reach out and connect with people on a subconscious level, motivating them to act with their spending money.

A restaurant chain that wants to launch a new “must try” product might first draw on the image it has carefully produced for its corporate name. If marketing has been successful in the past, the restaurant will be a trusted entity in the minds of consumers. This in and of itself will often be enough to get consumers to give a new menu item a go.

The restaurant, however, will not rely on its image alone. It will employ other measures to market the new product as one that satisfies hunger, refreshes or even puts smiles on people’s face. It might even choose to sell the item by selling an emotion with the food product making a cameo appearance in commercials. The efforts will work in most cases because a holistic approach has been taken. The restaurant has a trusted image so its new product must be a good purchase to make. Consumers will reason this out and then respond with their orders.

Learning how to market a product from the corporate image right down to the item packaging itself takes study and skill. When the secrets behind successful efforts are understood and studied, success will follow.

Have you ever stopped to consider how it is certain companies manage to climb from the bottom to the very top without ever looking back? Are their products or services that much better than the competition or do they have a secret others might not know about?

Chances are it’s the latter and not the former that drive the successful companies that top your list of the best of the best. The big boys not only have huge marketing budgets, they know how to wield every penny they spend on advertising to get consumers to keep coming back for more.

Pay attention to commercials for the next big Hollywood blockbuster. The trailers shown will generally do several things. First off, of course, they will show off the major stars whose images have been carefully packaged to attract attention. Secondly, they will make certain to fire off the very best scenes that appeal to viewers on an emotional level.

It is a simple fact emotions sell. When campaigns manage to reach people in the emotional sphere, people react. They will make purchases. They will watch movies. They will spend their money.

Appealing to emotions through marketing is not necessarily an easy undertaking to get the hang of. When the right approach is taken and carefully cultivated, the results will be noticeable. The big boys in industry, in Hollywood and on Madison Avenue know how to get the job done. With practice and the right lead, you can enjoy similar results.

by John D

Textbook marketing approaches can go a long way toward building product sales and images. They can be just good enough to get noticed, but they might not produce the results you’re after. If you’re ready to go beyond what you learned in school or even by trial and error, there is an area of study worth paying attention to.

That area of study?

The real secret to marketing success lies in understanding human beings. People are complex creatures that are often compelled to believe they are ruled by their minds, logic and reason. To an extent, this is true. People, however, are also highly motivated by influences that are much less black and white in nature. They will purchase products and take particular actions if they are appealed to on an emotional or want-based level. Tap into both areas with a marketing campaign and the results can stagger.

Learning how to successfully market in a manner that falls outside the traditional box is not necessarily easy. There are ways to learn the ropes and gain insight from those who have mastered the art of making a decent product one that people will not pass by.

If you are ready to change your marketing approach and take campaigns beyond expectations, human nature and the forces that influence it should be your focus of study.