Blogs are a very popular outlet for Internet marketing? they are easy to start up and easy to keep up, they’re also a free medium to advertise products and ideas with content. Blogs are popular because readers get to participate in the conversation about niche markets and aren’t as formal as sales pages and website pages. Once you have a blog up and running, you need to promote it to get traffic to your blog? we won’t go into what you should have in your blog (compelling, interesting and informative articles/copy that engages the reader and creates a dialogue), but we will look at the top 10 ways to promote your blog and get the traffic that you need.

1. Social Bookmarking Sites

Sites such as Digg and Delicious grab traffic and have it head right for your blog. These are quite easy to use (so long as you don’t vote for yourself)? create a free account, write a description, add tags and the address to your blog, and voila! – With compelling headlines and descriptions, you can quickly gain traffic to your blog.

2. Visiting Forums

Visiting forums in your niche market is nearly as old as the Internet itself ?but this works and it’s free. Participate in the forums with relevant (and compelling) information that leads to what your blog is all about. Having a great signature line with a link to your blog is the key.

3. Free eBooks

Writing and offering free eBooks will also bring traffic to your website. Your eBook should be compelling, well written and chock full of useful information (otherwise, no one will visit your blog, thinking you’re nothing real to say anyway).

4. Join Groups

Look at MSN, Yahoo and Google groups and find some that are relevant to your niche. Don’t spam them ? enjoy the conversation and ease into it.

5. Video it

Create a video (or hire someone to do it) then submit it to one of the many popular video sites (such as YouTube) and find more traffic being directed to your site. It’s not a secret that video sites are incredibly popular and that this popularity is only growing each and every day ?so get in on the action, create a compelling video and get more traffic to your blog.

6. Update Regularly

Updating your blog regularly is very important. You have to continue updating with relevant information that is interesting and leads to more information yet to come. This will bring people back to your blog time and time again.

7. Blog Directories

This is very simple ?submit your blog to blog directories for backlinks and new potential readers. Although most blog directories will require a link back from your blog, it may not have to be permanent. Here are a few of the most popular blog directories you should submit to:

• BlogCatalog
• Blog Flux Directory
• BlogHub

8. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

RSS feeds are also incredibly popular and this allows your loyal readers to know when you’re updated your blog (which should be often and regularly). It’s quite easy to RSS your blog and this allows your readers to know when you’re posted more information that they want to read.

9. RSS Directories

Don’t forget, now that you’re syndicated your blog, to submit to RSS directories as well.

10. SEO your Blog

The most importnat, SEOing your blog will lead to receiving completely free traffic from search engines. The main things you need to do is make sure your markup is error-free, and you’re using headings, such as <h1>, <h2> and <h3>’s, the most important three. You should also link to your homepage with the appropriate anchor text. You should try and get as many quality backlinks as you can to help this along.