The #1 thing you can do today to increase the likelihood of success in blogging (or life, in general) is to be proactive. Every day there are so many amazing posts being written by great bloggers and they go relatively unseen, because we just don’t put ourselves out there enough (I, included). Someone mentioned on a post I recently published that blogging is about reciprocity, and that could not be any more true.
Step 1: Start Visiting More Blogs
In marketing, this is called “listening.” It’s familiarizing yourself with what is going on around you and your target readers.
You might really like your circle of blogs that you visit regularly, but you don’t know what new blogs or even older, more successful blogs may be out there until you learn to move beyond your circle. Many blogs these days have the comment luv feature, so what you could do one day per week is visit 3 or 4 new blogs, and you find them by clicking the comment luv links left by people who have commented on your favorite blogs.
Another way is to actually go and read the posts that you vote on in BlogEngage. 
Of course the hope is that you are already doing that, but if you are not, that’s a great way to kick this off. One of the things I prefer to do is to visit the links before I vote (duh, right?) and while that greatly reduces the number of votes I can leave every day, at least the votes are honest. And I try really hard to do the next step (commenting) whenever I do vote. A vote is worth a comment, right? At least!
Step 2: Start Leaving More Comments
In marketing, this called “engaging.” It’s the process of interacting with people that you want to become part of your circle of influence, and in blogging, ideally it comes in the form of commenting or passing it on.
You are probably sick to death of hearing about blog commenting, and if your blog is totally hopping, fine – you can skip this step. But if it’s not, and you’re not commenting – like, ever – maybe you should give it a try and see if it doesn’t help you out. Commenting is one of the main signs of life for a blog. Visitors can’t see your stats, so the only sign they have that it’s alive is seeing who is engaging by commenting, or other forms of activity like voting and retweeting.
It should be noted, in this case, that this is not about using comments to increase page rank. It’s about increasing the level of engagement happening on your own blog by being proactive. You don’t have to leave a lot of comments to start seeing a change in visitors and activity on your own blog; just a handful of intelligent comments left in just the right places every week will do the trick.
Step 3: Start Paying More Attention to Tweets
This is another form of “listening,” and obviously it did not exist before Twitter. But now that we have it, let’s use it!
Some days, I only have enough time to get on Twitter, tweet my own stuff and read a few of my favorite people’s tweets. But what I have noticed is that when I take 20-30 minutes to really see what has come down the pike, it benefits me greatly. Not only am I caught up on what’s happening in the blogosphere and the world in general, I usually come away with two to three new things to write about. In addition, pay extra attention to re-tweets of blogs or bloggers you have never heard of. Go out and visit, leave a remark, add them to Google Reader, etc. Keep growing your circle in this way.
One way to get a great, wide view of everything tweeted by the people you follow is to create a Twitter paper for yourself at paper.li. I love mine and now I read it every day!
Step 4: Start Making Friends Outside of the Blog World
This is another form of “engaging.” It is also learning and even listening.
As a result of my interaction on some of my other writing channels like HubPages, I’ve successfully drawn some new, non-blogger friends to my blog and other people’s blogs. The one thing you can count on is that writers write, and whether they are writing on a blog, or some other publishing platform, you want to encourage them to write about and link to you. Plus, the more diverse your set of back links is, the better.
One of the biggest side benefits to blogging outside of traditional blogs is that you increase one-way back links back to your blog. But I strongly, strongly caution against using that as your main reason for doing so. Unless you are a super sleuth, your efforts will be wasted, because those communities (especially HubPages) can smell a back link digger from a mile away and your hub will be promptly removed.
You Can Start This Today
The nice thing about a plan like the above is that you can start it today. Dedicate 15-20 minutes per day to one of the above activities. If you’re pressed for time, try a different one of these every day, rather than trying to do them all at once.
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