What is the best way to promote your blog and gain readership?

Darcy,
I began my HR related blog in 2006 posting it on Blogger. It started out with a subscription list from a electronic newsletter, and so when I posted something new I had to then send out an email to alert the subscribers of the new post. Back in about July a fellow blogger turned me on to Posterous.com
This changed my entire blogging experience. First Posterous went over to Blogger and moved a exact copy of the blogger posts from day 1 to their site. The next tool I was able to use was to set up an autopost command which took any post that I put up and places it in the original site on blogger, on facebook, on Twitter ad LikedIn within 2 minutes of my posting.
The last tool posterous made available was to create a list of all the names of the subscribers and now when a post goes up posterous sends all of them an email with a link to the new post. It also sets up push efforts out to the web. I am ot sure the method they use to calculate traffic, however prior to going onto posterous I was getting around 100 visits per month. Today we are getting around 5,000 per month.
The last thing I did and continue to do is to google blog directories ad list the posterous URL with as may of them as possible. I do not get much commentary i return but when I have the opportunity to talk with those who receive it I regularly am told they find information on the blog they have not see anywhere else.

3 Things...

1) Title Envy: Use titles that are interesting and would cause you to want to read...see how Yahoo does this on thier home page...all their titles are written in a way to cause you to feel compelled to read. If you do this appropriately and they are unique it will also help your posts optimize on sites like Google.

2) Get the Word Out: Make sure you are posting in many locations. Use some automation like posterous, or wordpress themes to auto post in places like Twitter, Facebook, Digg, etc... The more places your post can be seen, the more hits you'll get.

3) Content is King: Make sure your articles and posts have compelling content. You will never be as successful getting the word out on your blog as 100 people that like your post will be. If you get people reTweeting or linking back to your site, your readership will take off.

Best of luck!

Here are some of the things that work for us. We:
--Use Wordpress with various plugins. The "All in One SEO Pack is particularly useful for brigning traffic to the site based on the keywords we use.
--Include social bookmarking and share buttons. This allows readers to share the blog with others and bring more readers to the site.
--Use keywords in the headlines, body and tags to attract the people searching on those terms.
--Tweet the blog post.
--Publish the post to Facebook.
--List the blog URL in my Linkedin profile.
--List the blog URL in our free ebooks.
--Notify my subscribers with a teaser email when I post an article so they can go read it and leave comments.
--I respond to each comment. Responding to comments gives me another way to engage with my subscribers and visitors.

Write compelling articles.

Write for yourself and for a few friends. Don't write to gain an audience, but write for passion. Audience will come.

The #1 step to take to increase readership and promote your blog is to "give all of your knowledge, expertise, tricks and tools away".

Make it easy to download anything of value and then the #2 step is to make your website transparent, don't force readers to identify themselves and fill out a bunch of personal information.

Then the #3 step is to follow Charlie Judy's recommendations. If you don't do #1 +#2 nobody will care about #3.

Syndicate. Many news outlets are trying to figure out how to better their own readership. They need content, lots of content. Find sites that want to re-post your content. This might detract from the page views to your own site, so if your purpose is to sell stuff or recruit subscribers this technique might not be good. But if you want as wide an audience as possible for your ideas, spread your words around!

Credibility is another key to success. You should make sure you do your homework instead of making uneducated or unfounded comments on your blogs. As you will all agree, people who read your blogs will likely be from a similar industry or hobbie; and if you don't seem credible they will leave as quickly as they came in!

Best Regards
Marius

Definitely follow what Charlie has to say! On the back end I would also recommend following blogs in your industry or what you aspire to be on Twitter or Facebook. Doing so will give you not only some insight into how to capture your target audience but also who the big names are. A lot of blogs do guests posts, why shouldn't yours be one?
Link up everything and most of all, make sure it is easy to use.

All of the above suggestions are great. A couple other tips I'd add is to respond to comments on your blog. It shows you're paying attention to your audience, and if you get a dialogue going with a reader, it's great. Also, comment on other blogs because then you can add the URL of your blog in your comments. If you share something that's worthwhile, maybe raise a point the blog writer didn't mention, someone who reads your comment may decide to check out YOUR blog!

I am surprised that Mr. Collins has a thumbs down. That is pretty simple advise, but true. If that articles are not compelling or provide value, people may get through the first paragraph, but not much further. They probably will not return to read the next one, follow on social media or add you to their RSS reader. And, why would they some to you for the service you are promoting?

The style of your writing is very important. I have found my audience likes a provocative or edgy title, an grabber lead-in paragraph, meat in the center, and a solid wrap up. Most people do. I also add a little eye-candy, in the form of a picture, and frequent subtitles to guide the eye. I get about 400 reads a day. Good volume, I think, for a management blog.

The other mechanics people have already mentioned--twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, answering questions here and on other sites, setting up RSS, etc.. Do your research on who you are trying to reach and where you can find them. Volume means nothing if it is not your potential client. (Or you need to change you target!) I find Twitter and LinkedIn are great, Facebook not so much. Don't be afraid to try something new... print up business style cards with your blog URL and sprinkle them around a lobby.

Do not forget metrics... track reads daily. Try to understand what works and what does not. If something does not work, stop doing it.

However, if your blog does not say anything of interest, it is all for naught.

Cheers,
Todd

Be part of the community. Participate with others on-line. Leave them positive, insightful comments on their blogs and they will follow the link to yours. Strive to help others and they will strive to help you.

Create "Best of...." or "Top 10,20,30 blogs" in your area of expertise. Be sure to mix and match blogs that have high readership along with blogs that are excellent and bring value but may not have as much traffic as you think they deserve. Make your list of blogs, write the article and make sure you create a nice description for each blog. Publish, then notify everyone on the list that they are on the list. Be sure to tell them or ask them to promote this in a nice way. I've found a great thing to do is to provide short link to the article and tell them to feel free to share.

Another strategy to get people to visit, subscribe and promote is to create short Tweets to send out to your existing list. You may not want to do this with every article - but consider doing this for shareable articles with lots of value - i.e. a guide to choosing something, resources that your readers will want to use, etc.

Several experts mentioned Bookmarking - send your article to BizSugar.com it's a bookmarking site just for small business

Promoting and tracking your links -- use the PrettyLink plugin for Wordpress Blogs - it creates a branded header (that you create for yourself) and allows you to track clicks on your links.

Specialize
If you can be specialized in your blog, that would be a major plus.. for example, if you have a passion about cars then keep your blog focused on the latest cars news. Share everything you know and write in passion.

Be Professional
Do never involve politics, religion or any controversial topics in your writing.. that would cause confusion and readers will start retracting from your blog.

Response
Respond to direct questions on time, leave a space for other readers to express their own opinions.. accept negative comments and don't expect everyone to agree with you, this will improve the reputation of your blog.

Share & Exposure
Enable comment & share features in your blog, create accounts on social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook and other social bookmarking websites like Delicious & Digg and share your latest blog post over them.

Keep in Touch
Provide a newsletter subscription form in your blog so visitors can signup to receive your latest updates by email, this will keep the communication channel open and keep them coming.

You've gotten a lot of great ideas from all these experts. Here are a couple more that I have found to be really helpful in promoting blogs:

1) Guest Blogging: Choose 3-4 blogs similar to yours and follow them. Regularly comment on them in meaningful ways. After 4-6 weeks, once they are familiar to you, ask if you can do a guest blog for them. Most bloggers welcome guest blogging because of course it saves them time. When you guest blog, give them one of your best pieces. This is a really excellent way to extend your readership and up your followers.

2) Blog Carnivals: Host a blog carnival on the same subject of your blog. Give at least 4 weeks for people to submit their blog posts. Make link backs a requirement for participating in the blog carnival. That way every person who submits a post will be directing traffic to your blog. It will take you about an hour each time you post a blog carnival, but you will generate some excellent traffic.

3) Ask your friends to help: I'm talking your real-life friends. Ask them to share your blog across their social media networks. If you have a Facebook page, ask them to follow and share every time you post. You'd be amazed how your existing network can expand your readership.

4) Hold a Contest: Blog contests have consistently shown to be very successful in drawing in readership. Of course you have to have some great prizes, but once you have that, people will be clamoring to get them. To enter the contest you ask people to subscribe to your feed, leave a comment, tweet on Twitter, whatever you are working towards building.

5) Give away a free PDF. Is there a topic that your readership could use a concise white paper or mini-book on? If you have something that others will find valuable, you can put it into a PDF that you give away for free when they subscribe to your blog. This is also an excellent way to build up your mailing list.

6) Use an RSS publisher. To make it quicker and easier to broadcast new blog posts, use an RSS publisher that will automatically post updates to all of your social networks. HootSuite has a feature like this where you can tell it what RSS feed to follow, and whenever you post a blog, it will post to all the social media networks you have specified. This saves you time and guarantees that your regular networks will hear about any new posts you have put out.

It takes time to build up a readership on your blog, so have patience. It's a good idea to come up with a written strategy so you aren't promoting haphazard, but instead have a method you apply consistently.

The best ways to get readers for your blog are:

1) Provide content that is truly resourceful and not self-promotional.

2) Do on-site search engine optimization using tools like Scribe (http://bit.ly/wmscribe) so that those users not in social media can find your content in searches.

3) In line with the onsite SEO, make sure you blog regularly, ideally at least once if not twice a week.

4) Make it easy to share your content through easy-to-use retweet/share buttons which ideally show Facebook Like Faces and Retweet numbers for credibility.

4) Share the content yourself in relevant social media communities as part of sharing other content that you curate from others as well so you are not just doing self-promotional broadcasts.

6) Make it easy to subscribe to your content not just by RSS, but by email as well.

Indeed, as Bonnie mentions, it does take time to build your readership, but I think if you follow the above you should see an increase in readers soon.

The first key is: have patience. It takes some time to build up readership for a new blog for several reasons:

- New blogs don't have Google's "trust" established.
- They don't have many links pointing to them.
- They don't have a lot of content for the search engines to index.
- They haven't developed a reputation among potential readers.

Stick with, post regularly, focus on quality content, and readership will gradually increase. To help accelerate that process, here are a few more tips:

- Build links to your blog from every possible source. Link to the new blog from your website, Facebook page, LinkedIn and Twitter profiles, other social networking and social bookmarking profiles, comments you leave on other blogs—anywhere you can create a link.

- Make sure your blog is optimized for search; if you're using WordPress, be sure to install and use the All in One SEO Pack plugin.

- Write "linkable" content. Other bloggers like linking to informative sources.

- Add your blog to blog directories and RSS syndication sites.

- For more tips, check out this post: How to Launch a Successful Blog in 12 Weeks: Lessons from Webbiquity (http://webbiquity.com/business-blogging/how-to-launch-a-successful-blog-in-12...).