The final activity for the Edublogs Teacher Challenge encourages participants to explore and share ways of building blog readership – in other words blog promotion.
In the 6 months or so I have been blogging there are a couple of strategies and/or tools that I have used to build my blog’s readership and to continue conversations in education on our globally connected world.
Twitter – This is probably the most influential way to increase readership (once you’ve posted). I ensure that I always tweet my blog posts @jasmont1 to Twitter to ensure that my followers are informed of my new post. I also have my blog URL listed on my Twitter profile page so other Tweeters can decide whether they wish to start following me via Twitter and/or my blog. This, in my humble opinion, is the key to developing your personal/professional learning network (PLN). I do make the conscious effort to follow other educators – in particular teacher librarians, and teachers who are interested in integrating web technologies into their teaching and academics in the field.
Post regularly -Regular posts are an essential component of increasing readership of one’s blog. Writing new/fresh/interesting content should keep readers wanting to come back to your blog.
Commenting on other bloggers’ posts -This challenge has helped me understand that making comments on other bloggers’ posts is a great way to increase the sense of community.
Be willing to share – Sharing resources, ideas and experiences is an excellent way to encourage other bloggers to follow your work. Chances are others will learn something from your blog post/s and that can ignite interest in your blog.
International Edublogger’s Directory – I listed my blog in International Edublogger’s Directory in order to find other Edubloggers from around the world and to find out what others are writing about.
Thanks to Britt Gow here’s are a couple of useful links for future reference – Glyn Moody’s “10 Things To Build Blog Readership” and Seth Godin’s “How To Get Traffic For Your Blog“.
Image “169 Tips” courtesy Seth 1492 Flickr photostream
