Q: How Can I Build Blog Readership?

It can be very difficult and demoralizing to start a new blog, pour your heart into some great posts, and then have absolutely nobody read it or leave comments. You will quickly wonder why you are continuing to devote time to your blog and if things don't change, you'll quit.

Here are some ideas to help you develop some initial readership:

• If you get into a creative streak, be sure to set some items aside as "drafts" so that you can keep the blog updating on a regular schedule. Search engines like this and readers like to see regular updates too.
• Hit up pingoat and when you submit your site bookmark the resulting page. Every time you post a new item visit your bookmark to issue another set of pings.
• Make sure you are submitting your items to places like Digg, del.icio.us and so on, when appropriate. Be sure that you don't spam them, but when you have something decent, put it out there and see if anyone is interested.
• In the beginning, consider joining some blogging forums or even some blog traffic exchanges. Blog explosion was good once, but it seems the new owners have been driving it into the ground. If you find one with happy and active users, instead of just zombie viewers, they can help you get comments.

Also, it's hard to be the first person to make a comment... especially if none of your posts have comments. It makes the reader feel they have driven down a dead-end street. If you have to, create a couple of different accounts, and then a day or two after you publish a post, add a comment. By the time a day or two goes by you might think of something to "suggest" that could have been included. Basically, leave a helpful comment which improves your resource for the reader, perhaps linking to some good external site.

When you aren't working on something else, find other bloggers in your topic area, and then go and leave constructive and helpful comments on their posts. Don't be rude and blast your link, but have good comments and come back from time to time. Instead of getting a link in their comments, you are trying to get the author to visit your blog, see that you provide value to your readers, and get a link in their blogroll. Of course, don't go for the hugely successful sites, they don't have any reason to mess with small fish like us.