I’ve noticed an interesting trend in the past 6 months from bloggers online, I’m going to call it Follow Blogging. A blogger will make a post of some sort on topic A. You then navigate to other bloggers on a similar topic and within a day or two (or faster) they too will have a post on topic A. The most recent example was with Twitter.
Twitter is a social application that lets you simply make little comments on what you’re currently doing or random thoughts or whatever really. You can follow me on twitter as thesilly1.
Anyway, on January 23rd ProBlogger posted a blog about Twitter. On January 30th, Shoemoney, another blogger, made a post about twitter and another post on March 22nd. Finally, Zac Johnson and John Chow made posts about Twitter on April 2nd and 3rd respectfully. Since then I’ve lost count of who’s made posts about Twitter like Andrew Wee, SuperAffiliate, etc…
Obviously, this is an example of seeing a neat new application (Twitter) trying it and then blogging about it. However, this Folllow Blogging is happening more and more often on many subjects. So, what’s the point?
Well, when we see a trend we must think out of the box and determine how WE can use this to our advantage.
So how do we use this to our advantage?
When a blogger with lots of traffic writes a post. There are two things that you should consider doing. First, determine if this is going to be a ‘hot post’, which I’ll get to in a second. If yes, then write a post on the same topic but make sure your post is either relevant, contradicting or adds important information, etc… If the blogger has pingbacks set then be sure to link to the popular blogger from your blog post.
Now return to the popular blog and make a comment on their blog. Make sure that you comment is again either relevant, contradicting, etc…. Be sure to include your website as your name and possibly even in the post if you think it’s appropriate. Then make other comments on the post. Now wait for other bloggers in the niche to make Follow Blog’s. When these show up go and make more posts in their comments about the subject. Eventually, you’ll have your blog mentioned on a couple of sites. Most of these sites have a similar group of readers and people will eventually make there way to your site.
What are we looking for in a post?
Obviously, not every post is going to turn out to be a Follow Blog. Since the above method requires a bit of work we must determine which posts are worth trying to get Follow Blog Traffic from. The first and most obvious is any “hot” item in the news. These can be celebrity news or any sort of hot news. Today, for example is Earth Day, if a popular blogging is saying something about Earth Day maybe you can create a list of ways that you’re trying to save the earth this year. Other good Follow Blog topics are new applications or books and anything controversial.
How do we spot these posts quickly?
If you aren’t using an RSS reader then you should be you’ll save a lot of time by not refreshing these sites all the time. Setup these popular bloggers on your RSS feed and check your RSS often.
This method takes some work but if you can get a few readers to your site hopefully your content can keep them coming back.
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