Building relevant traffic for our blog is often the biggest challenge we face. One great way to generate links and traffic is to register your blog with popular blog directories.

WebsiteMagazine.com recently published a list of 30 popular blog directories. I’ve taken this list and turned it into a blog submission tracking spreadsheet that you can download and use to track your efforts in submitting your blog to the relevant blog directories on the list.

30 Popular Blog Directories

Use this list to generate additional traffic for your blog by

• Visiting each of these directories and
• Registering and claiming your blog.

Then use this document to track your efforts and any login information and other notes related to your submission. Keep in mind that not all directories are appropriate for all blogs. Some serve special niches which may not be appropriate for the focus of your blog. Also, check within your own industry to see if there are industry specific directories where you’ll want to pursue a listing for your blog.  

Many blog platforms provide the capability to “ping” or notify popular blog catalogues when you create new posts but a more hands-on effort on your part will ensure that you create a more targeted, focused listing that will pay off in more targeted, focused traffic to your blog.

You’re invited to attend Social Media Essentials for Business - a free teleseminar on Wednesday, May 20, 2009. 

Executive Coach and best selling author, Marsha Egan, will interview me on why, as a business owner or manager, it’s essential that you add social media to your marketing mix. We’ll discuss the major social media platforms and give examples of how you can use these to build your brand, establish your authority, create relationships and turn those relationships into partnerships, prospects, customers and profits.

View the following video for a message from me as to what you’ll learn when you tune in on May 20th! (By the way, even if you can’t attend, go ahead and register for Social Media Essentials for Business and you’ll receive the free MP3 recording of the session to listen to at your convenience…

I had the pleasure recently to interview Jan Vermeiren, Europe’s foremost expert on business networking and the author of How to REALLY use LinkedIn, one of the best books on any continent for getting the most from your LinkedIn account.

In speaking with Jan you soon realize that he gives such great advice for using LinkedIn not because he’s a LinkedIn expert but because he’s a networking expert. Jan’s the founder of Networking Coach and came to the attention of the global community with the publication of his best selling book on harnessing the power of networks, Let’s Connect!: A Practical Guide for Highly Effective Professional Networking.

How to Turn 20 Minutes into 45

When I approached Jan for this interview I told him that it would be about 15-20 minutes in length. I was fully prepared to honor this time committment but Jan, as incredibly generous as he is, wouldn’t stop giving great tips, techniques and strategies on turbocharging your LinkedIn presence. So grab a pen and plenty of paper to write down all the great LinkedIn and networking ideas Jan reveals:

• Where the real power of your LinkedIn network lies
• How to quickly grow an effective network
• What are the 3 most important principles for getting the most out of online networking
• The biggest problems with online networking
• … and much, much more

Free Light Version of How to Really Use LinkedIn

Jan has graciously made a light version of his LinkedIn book available at How-to-REALLY-Use-LinkedIn.com. His primary site, Networking-Coach.com, provides links to Jan’s products and services as well as a number of great free resources on building your prowess in business and professional networking.

Free Teleseminar: Social Media Essentials for Business

Jan Vermeiren provides great information and if you want to learn even more about using Social Media and Social Networking to accelerate your business marketing, reserve your seat for a free, 55 minute tele-session that will reveal the power of not only LinkedIn but blogs, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other power social media platforms to give your business the edge it needs in these tough economic times! This value-packed, free social media marketing workshop will be broadcast via telephone Wednesday, May 20, 2009. Reserve your seat now!

And now, on to the interview, enjoy!

Michael Stelzner surveyed 880 marketers to create his Social Media Marketing Industry Report. He started out asking what is the most important question you want answered about Social Media Marketing.

The #1 Question social media marketers asked was, “What are the best tactics to use?” Find out the rest of the Top 10 Questions Social Media Marketers want answers to along with insight as to …

• How much time marketers are investing in social media
• Social media’s benefits
• The correlation between time invested and results 
• Top tools for social media and much more.

Michael’s making this invaluable report on social media marketing available for free (<– click the link!). It’s full of great ideas for adding social media to your own marketing mix as and provides social media marketers (like myself) plenty of inspiration for what products and services we can offer our clients.

The Rocky Mountain News is dead. Long live InDenver Times.

InDenver Times is a collaboration between ex-Rocky Reporting staff and several Denver area entrepreneurs who are betting that there are 50,000 loyal subscribers to the former Rocky Mountain News who are willing to switch their allegiance to the new Rocky Mountain News InDenverTimes.com.

Most will admit that getting people to pay for something that they perceive should be free is going to be a tough ‘row to hoe’ as my grandmother used to say. The challenge is even greater when you consider that InDenver Times is pretty much positioned as a local play with a focus on the Denver Metro area. In other words, their national or international appeal is going to be somewhat limited meaning that they’re going to really have to work the local market to secure the subscriber numbers needed.

Can they do this? I don’t know but as a native Coloradoan and a long-time Denver area resident, I hope so. What’s a given is that their team is going to have to fire on all cylinders to make this work including tapping heavily into online social media to build support, buzz and their subscriber base. After all, who better to promote and buy in to this new digital newspaper model but those who’re already immersed in the online world.

Using Twitter to Promote InDenver Times

Full disclosure. I’m related to one of the entrepreneurs backing this venture. Brad Gray, a successful local entrepreneur with McAleer Gray, is not only a friend but he’s my cousin. I recently sent him a post with suggestions for using social media in general and Twitter in specific to boost their subscription drive efforts. Here’s the summary:

Either they (or somebody) has staked this profile at Twitter.com/InDenverTimes…

I don’t know if this is the indenvertimes twitter profile but, if it is, you should put someone in charge and begin to put it to use to support their efforts by:

1. Get to work now on creating a stream of InDenver Times generated ‘tweets’ with ongoing updates to Twitter that alerts your followers on the subscription drive, breaking news, staff profiles and upcoming stories and opinion pieces. Use it to promote local and national stories on your efforts like Westword’s coverage and the NBC Nightly News mention.
2. Create a custom background that tells the InDenver Times story and provides links to your primary properties. And, obviously, get your profile built ASAP.
3. Put a staffer in charge but enlist all of the reporting and management staff in keeping the tweets flowing. Have each of the staff, if they haven’t already, set up their own Twitter profiles with backgrounds and cross follow everyone.
4. Register at www.hashtags.org and use #indenvertimes to track all the tweets (you add the tag to each of your Twitter posts) related to your efforts.
5. Feed your twitter stream into your website and into your facebook profile which also needs to be setup…
6. Pick up locally based twitter followers quickly. Start out by farming the top of the food chain. Go to http://grader.twitter.com/location. Start with Denver then work through the region. Follow everybody on these lists and send those who follow back – which will be the majority – a Direct Message (dm) that thanks them and asks them to further spread the word.
7. Use Twitter Search to track the buzz. Search on the terms indenvertimes and iwantmyrocky to start… You’ll see something like this… (and see #4 above for a tip on using hash tags in this effort).
   
   Use Retweets, Replies (@twitter-name) and Direct Messages to thank all who’ve commented and keep the buzz building. By the way, when I conducted this search early this morning you’d already attracted over 35 pages of twitter mentions to your efforts on these 2 terms alone.

Twitter grew 800 % last year and is currently growing at about 1400% … you need to be using this and other social media channels to give yourself a fighting chance to attract the interest AND the subscribers you need to keep the spirit of the Rocky alive for another 150 years!

Comment with Your Ideas and Win a Subscription

Do you have one or more great ideas on helping InDenver Times meet their subscriber goal of 50,000? Comment on this post and we’ll select the best one to receive a one year paid subscription to the new InDenver Times … a $59.88 value. Note: If InDenver Times doesn’t make it then no subscription but don’t worry, you aren’t alone. We all lose!