The Secret To Building Better Relationships With Bloggers

The reality is that most of your faithful readers will undoubtedly be bloggers themselves.

Developing a relationship with a blogger requires a great deal of mutual respect and trust. They have to juggle their personal lives with their blog responsibilities and still find the time to read, comment, share, and RT your articles too.

One of the misconceptions when starting out new in the blogosphere is that you can bypass this process of networking and interacting with bloggers.

You can’t. Period. End of story.

Let’s take a deeper look into what makes up these relationships and why we would even want to develop online friendships. Shall we?

Google

Google is about the only “free lunch” we get as bloggers. I am grateful for the traffic it sends to my small directory of blogs.

But, as I really pour over my blog analytics (stats), the greatest amount of page views and community contribution I see comes from my friends, peers, and colleagues.

And it’s obvious that in any link building strategy, it will most likely be from the relations I create and not Google that will help my blog the most.

Remind me why I want/need online relationships again?

• Develop mutually beneficial connections
• Generate more awareness for your own blog
• Establish credibility in my chosen niche/category
• Grow your blog readership and community
• Build your brand

Now that we’ve established the merits for creating and cultivating these relationships, let’s discuss how to approach other bloggers, where to find them, and what to do when we’ve made the contact.

I’m assuming that part of the keyword study in your niche/category was also finding out who were some of the most influential bloggers who also published similar content as you. Since the blogosphere is always losing and adding new blogging talent, it’s important to keep up to date with your industry’s activity and to make a point of having an overview of what’s going on and who’s saying what.

When you publish a new article, place the title in Google and look at the results. Click-through to the blogs prominent from the results page and spend some time determining if this is someone to develop a relationship with. Social media sites like Twitter are a good way to develop your “circle” too.

You may be overwhelmed by the multitude of blogs and bloggers out there. How you keep track of it all is up to you. Some people keep their favorite blogs in a ‘favorites’ tab, others use spread sheets, and others subscribe to blogs.

What am I supposed to say to other bloggers anyway?

There are going to be days where comments are limited, tweets are minimal, and you’re not having many discussions with other bloggers.

If that is the case for you, you can imagine how it is for other bloggers. So, reach out to them. Break the ice! Don’t be shy! What’s the worst that could happen? They ignore you? So what?

Convince them you are a genuine and sincere person. Bloggers are generally suspicious in nature, so don’t let this alarm you if their arms are not wide open at first. It will generally take a steady dose of interaction for them to become comfortable with you.

Find a common point of interest… like THEIR blog maybe?! Mention an article you read on their site. Be supportive and complimentary. This is not the time to argue some petty philosophical issue. Assure them that you would like to be part of the discussions on their blog.

And really mean it.

Now repeat these steps daily. You’re not always going to have the same impact, but bloggers will enjoy engaging with you if you are positive, friendly, and have a good attitude.

What else could you do?

• Include them in “best of” or weekly lists
• Offer to guest post for them
• Promote their blog throughout the blogosphere

You are actually a helpful resource to other bloggers. Demonstrate your value.

If you are that selfish, money first, it’s all about me, willing to “step-on-the-throats-of–others-to-succeed” type of blogger, this article is not for you. Nor will you ever be successful in my book.

Um, I think I made a friend, now what?

Before you even start on your quest, you must be prepared for others to inquire about you. And they will do some investigating!

They’re going to go straight for your blog. After they’ve assessed how much time went into your blog’s presentation and layout, they’ll read your ‘About Me’ page, your advertising page, check out your Alexa Rank, Page Rank, Twitter subscribers, Blog subscribers, comment counts, age of your blog,…and most of all, read your content!

Be prepared for this. Impress them. It will be much easier for them to reciprocate when they like you too.

In Closing

At this point in the article, I am supposed to be reinforcing the benefits of making friends, but it actually so much more than just link building and promotion.

There’s a great deal of personal enjoyment that comes from growing together, learning from each other, and mutual discovery.

One of the true realities of being a blogger, is that your blog will only ever be read by a very small portion of other bloggers out there. Fortunately, you have the power to offset that by being more socially dynamic.

Use that power.

Your true friend,

Jeffrey Baril – Source Blogger