How BlogCatalog Can Help You Promote Your Blog

BlogCatalog is a blog directory to organize the countless blogs out there on the world-wide-web. Right now, there are around 200,000+ blogs that have been added by their owners to this quickly growing directory. It's a great place to go if you're looking for a blog on something in particular, and it's a great place to go to do random searches of interesting keywords to find fun and interesting blogs. Just type your keyword into the search box or choose a word on the huge tag cloud on the homepage and browse through the blogs. Be careful - hours can pass in a flash!



If you are a blogger, this site is one of your best tools for promoting your blog to a whole new audience. It's an instant way to get more readers and a great place to connect with other bloggers on similar subjects. The site is completely free to join and only takes a few minutes to sign up for. Just adding your blog to the directory of BlogCatalog can help you get more eyes to your blog, but the social networking aspect of BlogCatalog makes it an even better resource to promote your blog.



Tagging Your Blog for Promotion



One of the best things about BlogCatalog is the 'tagging' system. When you add your blog to the directory, you use keywords to tag it. These keywords are just like the keywords you use in each of your blog entries. Choosing appropriate keywords will help you rank in the blog directory and help people find you easily.



There's a huge 'tag cloud' of blog categories on the homepage of BlogCatalog. Take a look at these popular tags and see if your blog can fit into one of the popular categories such as food & drink, technology, sports, green, or health. If so, add it as a tag. In addition to choosing an appropriate popular tag or two, it's also important to choose other less popular tags that are specific to your blog. While having popular tags is a great idea, there will be a lot of competitive blogs that could show up on the first few pages ahead of your blog, making it hard to find. For instance, if your blog is on vegetarian cooking, you'll want to tag your blog with the popular tag 'food and drink', as well as vegetarian, vegetables, healthy cooking, recipes, or anything else you find appropriate.



Shameless Blog Promotion



Another way to promote your blog is to talk in the 'shameless blog promotion' discussion forum. This forum is very interesting and lively with conversation at all times. Just drop in, say hello, and let people know about your blog. Or you could start a thread or two asking questions to the discussion forum, such as 'what are your favorite vegetables?' or 'do you ever cook vegetarian food?' Asking a question helps to start a lively conversation, grow your network of friends, and gets more eyes on your profile and blog. Also, you can use this information to write a blog entry or two that addresses the specific questions answered and post it to the thread.



Join Groups



As soon as you have registered your blog with BlogCatalog, start visiting the many groups that are available on this site. Using the same 'vegetarian cooking blog' as an example, you would want to join in many groups that are relevant to your blog audience, such as 'Vegan', 'Crafty Herbivore', 'Recipe Exchange' and 'Health, Beauty and Cuisine'. Join as many groups as you like, or at least as many as you can keep up with. Don't go overboard; choose the busiest, liveliest groups with the most members so that you can make connections and turn the correct, most interested audience on to your blog.



Once you have signed up, tagged your blog, done your shameless self promotion, and joined the correct groups, now start talking so that you can have fun and promote your blog!





The author of this article is Tim Moore, who maintains a profile on blogcatalog for his Social Security Disability Blog.