This is the 3rd post in a 4 part series detailing how you can market your blog essentially for free and drive more traffic to your site then you previously had.  Part 1 of the series can be viewed here, as can part 2 here.  In this installment I am going to cover how you can drive traffic to your site.

The first way I am going to discuss with you about getting the word out about your blog is by visiting forums closely associated with your blog topic.  Joining online discussion groups, commonly found on forums, and injecting your wisdom and experience into the conversations taking place there can lead to awareness of your abilities and skills.  An few simple ways to do this is by signing up with your blogs name.  This creates a mini-brand name on the site and lets people easily associate your name with your blog.  One note, leave the .com or .net off your username on the forums, many forums consider this a blatant attempt at spamming and you could possibly be banned.  The second way is by leaving a direct link in your “signature” on the blog.  You should check with the forums admin or moderators first, as this too may violate the forums rules for advertising.  But if it doesn’t, definately put it in there.  The final way is to provide direct links to articles you’ve written that discusses the topic at hand in depth.  It gives forum users an easy way to check your blog, and while they are there, they may find something else of interest if you are using the related posts plugin I recommended here.

To gain more readership, you should also create an RSS feed.  This is most effectively and efficiently done by signing up at Feedburner.com.  Feedburner is a feed enabler that takes your posts and condenses them down to text and sends them out subscribers, either thru email or a web browser.  People who want to regularly be updated on your blog’s activity will subscribe to new post updates thru a feed, and you should help enable them to do it easily.  While all subscribers will not always click directly back to your site, many will that want to read more or find a related article they are interested in.  Also, Feedburner has recently teamed up with Google Ads so now you can place ad links in your feeds and gain income from them.

Finally, another great way is boost readership thru social networking sites.  Sites like Myspace, Facebook, MyBlogLog and many others like them offer you another outlet to create info pages about you and upload your blog’s feed (see above) into your social network’s profile, letting a whole new set of readers view your content.  This will also increase your feed stats, so it is definately a double bonus.  Keep the theme on your new social network profiles congruent with your blog’s theme and brand.  Don’t confuse your readers with conflicting styles.

In the final part of my series, “Creating a Marketing Plan for Your Blog,” I am going to cover how you can create new promotional products cheaply (as in free), market your current goods or items, and how to tag your content to get even more traffic.