Marketing & PR as an author: Connect with other bloggers

This is the second post about my experience reading David Meerman Scott‘s book, The New Rules of Marketing and PR. As I said in November, I am going to post a few different posts about what I learned from reading it and how what I learned could be translated to marketing as an author.

One of the definite things I noted when reading the parts of the book about blogging (I’ve skipped around a little bit in the book) is that the only way your blog will really be successful is if you connect with other bloggers.

How do you connect with them, you ask? Send out pleading emails to them, asking if they’ll feature your blog? Demand that they send their readers your way? No, which I hope was obvious to you.

The way you start connecting is by finding other bloggers in your genre, or other bloggers that you enjoy reading, and comment on their blog posts. Don’t just say, “Great blog post! Check my blog out too!” If you comment, have something to add to the conversation that post started. Most times the comment section has you comment either logged in through your blog, Twitter, or a place where you can enter your name and website, so you don’t even need to worry about putting a link in your comment to your site. Focus your comment on the blog post author and the blog’s readers.

This applies to all bloggers in every industry and interest. IBM writes about it in this post from 2010. Joanna Penn, author of The Creative Penn blog, wrote this about connecting with other authors by commenting on their blogs:

“I would recommend contributing a useful comment, such as asking a follow-up question to the post or referring to something particular in the post that you liked and why. Not only will this put you higher on the author’s radar and more and likely to interact with you, it also gives other readers of the post something to build on and it may generate a dialogue between several writers.”

Carol Tice wrote in a blog post earlier today on Make a Living Writing that connecting with influential bloggers is the way to make your blog stand out.

“As my mentor Jon Morrow once pointed out to me, great new bloggers aren’t born — they’re appointed, by the current crop of bloggers who already have big audiences. They can mention you on their blog or retweet you, or you might guest post on their blog, and find a ton of new readers. Your voice can be fresh and vital, but without someone powerful turning a spotlight on it, you could blog away in obscurity for a long time.”

So get out there, find blogs you enjoy reading and who are influential in your area, and start connecting.

About Brittany Westerberg

I'm a lover of writing and books. I graduated from South Dakota State with a master's degree in communications in 2011, the same year I was first published. I'm a wife and mom, and I work in content and digital marketing in South Dakota.