The book that took 35 experts 18 months to create is now here! I am honored to have been asked to contribute a chapter on the Masterful Guerrilla Team.

Book Description: Let 35 World Class Guerrilla Marketing Coaches Teach You Their Time-tested Tactics and Strategies for Getting New Customers and Turning Them Into Your Most Enthusiastic Fans! Here is a taste of what you’re going to learn in Guerrilla Marketing on the Front Lines: * Dozens of new high impact strategies for reaching and acquiring new customers…even on a shoestring budget, * Cutting edge online tactics designed to cut through the clutter and dramatically increase your visibility and conversion rates, * The keys to developing high powered Guerrilla partnerships and affiliate programs that will leverage your time and actually make you money while you sleep. Are you ready to turn your own prospects into customers and then into raving fans who will buy from you again, and again, and again? Join us on the Front Lines and get ready to launch your own Guerrilla Marketing Attack!

Pick up a copy today from Amazon.com.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called “traction”, which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that”s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger”s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it”s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it”s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it”s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it”s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it”s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information about Blog Mastermind click this link:

www.BlogMastermind.com

Research shows that approximately 10% of companies go out of business each year, and that the main reason for this is that the leaders in the company are living in a state of denial…denial about the changing business world, about the state of the economy or completely ignoring their own blind spots while the team around them falls apart. They may eventually wake up to their failing situation, but 9 out of 10 times that wake-up call comes way too late.

In any business, there are two fundamental foundations for …the core of your business…meaning the products or services you offer, and the augmented products and services…you know…the little bells and whistles you add to your business or the shifts you make to meet the changing needs in the marketplace. So, the question is “Do your products and services look like they did 10 years ago, or are you augmenting your look, feel and features to meet the changing needs in the marketplace?”

Sigmund Freud has defined denial as the state of “knowing but not knowing. According to Dictionary.com, denial is “an unconscious defense mechanism used to reduce anxiety by denying thoughts, feelings, or facts that are consciously intolerable” Unfortunately, I see many business owners in this state of denial today…they are refusing to acknowledge that our economic situation is at risk. They are refusing to acknowledge that Generation Y is now here and is asking for both products and companies to be different. They are refusing to updrade, outsource or downsize if needed.

If you are reading this blog post, and if you believe that your business is falling in that trap of heading down a dark path, because you are denying the impending danger, I have 3 suggestions for you today:

1) Write down what you believe you are denying about your business

2) Ask for support from someone who is an objective third eye…someone who can look at your business and give you honest feedback about why it may be failing

3) Hire an adviser, coach or mentor…someone who can help you get your business moving in the direction it needs to go to not just survive but thrive in the years to come.

Join Gen Y Buzz.com today.

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I found a great tool over the week-end: Easy Audio Wizard.  The tool is super simple to use, and you can end up with a great looking play button for your website.  The tool allows you to stream audio onto your website so that the audio plays instantly (rather than having to wait on the file to download!)

You can see what the finished product look like here, on the Gen Y Buzz Podcast.

With the tool, you can either record straight into the software OR you can load one of your existing audios.  You then convert the file to a streaming audio, and a little piece is code is generated for your website.  You will need a simple FTP transfer tool to move the files over to your website, and I use ipSwitch. There is also a free program: Core FTP that seems easy enough to use.

Tuesday | 60min

Upcoming Dates
Tuesday, September 9, 2008 at 2:30 Eastern:

Description:
Social media and online communities are giving businesses around the world a new way to engage and interact with their customers, partners and employees. Such online conversations can take many forms and the business benefits are virtually limitless– from improved market research and brand visibility to better employee and customer satisfaction.

Register Here

I had a great conversation last night with Matthew O. Brimer of Go Cross Campus . These guys are amazing, and they are bringing a new online social game to colleges and universities across the country. The game has caught my eye, as it teaches a wide variety of leadership and strategic skills (just by playing the game!) If you have not read the article in the New York Times from earlier in the year, you can read it here: Storming the Campuses.

If you are interested in your college or university participating, contact Matthew O. Brimer at matt@gocrosscampus.com

About Matthew O. Brimer

Matthew O. Brimer is a sociology and economics major at Yale University. Brimer is Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer of GoCrossCampus (GXC), a massively multiplayer team-based social gaming platform. Brimer currently serves at Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer of Yale Entrepreneurial Society, and has coordinated marketing efforts for Apple Inc., Osborne Recruitment in Ireland, and several on-campus student organizations. Brimer has also helped lead past startups, including an antique furniture procurement, auction and distribution business; an online audio time capsule community; and a centralized database for archiving transitional justice and human rights documents from around the world.