Relationship Blogging: Still the Best Way to Promote and Grow Your Blog

Ok, I’ve just come up with a cool idea if I may say so myself. Recently I’ve been thinking about how important relationships are to bloggers and how it can equate to more traffic.

I’ve also been thinking about MyBlogLog’s success and how easy the service makes it to build a community of readers. Similarly I’ve been blown away with the recent success of the 2000 Bloggers phenomena by Tino Buntic. It is an excellent example of how viral promotion can really work in the blogosphere.

Our own Blog Network

So I asked myself if there was some way I could use the concept to help other bloggers to build more traffic. Yesterday I was reading comments on my post “Promoting Your Blog: Which way is Best for You”, and one in particular stood out. Milt linked to it with a post called “Relationship Isn’t Everything. But Still Wins It”.

It reminded me that I used to bookmark a favorite for everyone who has ever linked to me or commented on my blog. I did it with the intention of keeping track of these blogs and visiting them once in a while. But it was just a static file and most of the time I would forget it was even there so I’ve decided it’s time that I took it to the next level.

My first thought was to just subscribe to everyone’s newsfeed and put them under a common category in my reader. But when it started to grow to an unwieldy large size I realized that it won’t be long before I stop reading them all because I’m lazy and there were just too many clicks to bother.

But I found a solution for that. I’m using a service called FeedBlendr that enables me to create a single “blended” RSS feed that is made up from many feeds. I intend to read it every day and make a point of regularly commenting on these blogs.

So with just a single click and oílla - I now have my own instant network! Good idea huh? Of course it’s not really a blog network (at least for now) but for me it’s the next best thing. I think of it as more like my own little neighbourhood of blokesters who I intend to support.

Here is what it might look like in your newsreader. Or if you want, you can subscribe to this newsfeed here.

Remember the whole point of this exercise is to make it easy for you to keep track of and support bloggers to build relationships with, and perhaps even more importantly to improve your blog traffic. It’s the very same thing that the a-listers do and for it to work you need to engage in the conversation by regularly linking to them and leaving comments, trackbacks etc.

So to get the ball rolling here are the first 17 members of the Blokester Network (listed in no particular order and more still to come):

Congratulations to everyone and don’t forget to visit these sites and get to know each other. And don’t forget to start your own network of friends either. It’s a viral thing.

So if you want to become a part of the Bloke’s Circle of Friends, just link to me (and hopefully have something nice to say and you’re in. It doesn’t get much easier than that.