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Community, communication, consideration. The three founding principals of marketing your blog to an audience, whether general, or specific. People want to get be a part of the next thing, so give them a chance. 1. Community Whether you start up your own community, or join others, via means of MyBlogLog, MySpace, LinkedIn, Xing and others, this is a guaranteed and proven way to get visitors, to get hits, impressions, and often quality traffic, because you know that these people haven’t just clicked on a random link or search engine listing, but have seen you or your website’s profile, and followed it through to your homepage/landing page. The best ways to get the profiles themselves noticed? See below… 2. Communication I don’t mean ’spam’ by this either. Get involved in genuine discussions, with other people of similar interests, start up a civilized, profitable, knowledgeable discussion, then when you’re finished, ask if they’d take a look at your blog or website. You’d be surprised how many loyal readers have come to my own blog in this way. Simply leave comments in communities, on social networks, on other blogs, etc. Still not quite your way of dealing with people? 3. Considering All the time, you have to consider the reader. Who are you writing for? The reader. Who will be navigating your blog? The reader. Who should you devote your time, energy and attention to? The reader. Consideration is important, and you can show this in many ways. Either by having a clutter-free, easy-to-follow design, or you could alternatively try getting the readers involved, by asking questions in blog posts, or website statements, and opening up comments. If people comment, strike up a conversation with them, and keep them coming back. Answer their queries and requests with solid, reliable, dependable answers, and take note of the feedback they leave by using it, and putting it into action. If someone states that your text is hard to read, change the colour to stop it clashing so much with the background, or simply make it slightly larger. There are lots of ways you can show consideration to your audience, and it shows just how loyal you are to your readers through this. If someone spots an inaccuracy in a blog post and tells you, don’t be lazy. Go change it! They’ll keep coming back, they’ll tell their friends, and in turn this C will do word-of-mouth marketing wonders. The Element of Surprise You’ve looked at both SEO, content and the ‘C’s now, but my last tip is probably what has brought me the large majority of my visitors, both loyal and one-off traffic hoppers. Differentiate yourself, do something different. Be daring, be random! Try something wild, or something completely unheard of, whether it’s outrageous, or greatly beneficial to the reader. Sometimes, even beneficial to the writer! (http://www.techzi.net/donations/) Mad things work out great sometimes, other times, they really can lower your reputation, so it’s time to take calculated risks here. My advice? Follow your instincts. Be an entrepreneur. Take that risk. Make it happen. Throw a competition (http://www.techzi.net/competition/), for all the good it will do. Stand out and be different. Darren will sure know what I mean by that…

Best Practices Learn how the pros achieve higher productivity through enhanced collaboration. Attention Management - Reduce time wasted in the Inbox. CC to Wiki - Get around the curse of Reply-to-All. Collaborating on a non wiki page using a wiki page - Use the attachment feature to collaborate on presentation files, etc. Designing Spaces - Key considerations for creating new spaces. Developing a Public Blogging Strategy Distributed Document Review Gardening and Wiki gardening tips Index Pages - create starting points for navigation around topics of interest. Lightning Editing - how to co-edit a document with a collaborator Securing buy-in - getting others to shift perspectives on wikis Sparking participation at events Using the workspace as a document repository

Best Practices Learn how the pros achieve higher productivity through enhanced collaboration > . > Attention Management > - Reduce time wasted in the Inbox CC to Wiki > - Get around the curse of Reply-to-All. > Collaborating on a non wiki page using a wiki page > - Use the attachment feature to collaborate on presentation files, etc. > Designing Spaces > - Key considerations for creating new spaces. > Developing a Public Blogging Strategy > Distributed Document Review > Gardening > and > Wiki gardening tips > Index Pages > - create starting points for navigation around topics of interest. > Lightning Editing > - how to co-edit a document with a collaborator > Securing buy-in > - getting others to shift perspectives on wikis > Sparking participation at events > Using the workspace as a document repository > Doing a demo Create tagging structures - Develop a core list of tags for your wiki Wiki Structure - Create a page which outlines important elements of the wiki Stop creating Word documents - The first rule of integrating wikis effectively See also Bonnes Pratiques for a chart of best practices and French translations.