But looking at the latest Problogger poll, the majority of Problogger readers haven’t written any guest posts. This is interesting to me, because that is the group of people I would most expect to be active guest bloggers—they know the benefits and have the motivation of growing a blog and going pro.

Some of the comments on that post hint at the reasons for not guest posting, and I’m curious to find out more specifics, so if you’re not guest posting, I’d love it if you’d take this quick poll.

Have any other thoughts on guest blogging? Leave a comment!

Sure, you might still get a little Google traffic, and if it was a really good post, hopefully some other bloggers linked to it and you’re still getting a few visitors clicking through. But wouldn’t it be nice to keep the post alive and kicking on your own blog?

Fortunately, it’s not that hard, especially if you’re using WordPress (I mention some plugins below that are for WordPress blogs, but you might be able to find equivalent ways of doing these things on other platforms, too). Read on to discover a few tricks you can use today.

Help readers find related information

The easiest way to keep old posts visible is to link to them. It’s also extremely effective: you can pretty accurately predict what will be interesting to a reader based on what they’re currently reading.

The simplest way to do this is simply to link to older posts when you’re writing a new post. Use the search tool on your blog to find posts that you may have forgotten about, and quickly scan through the titles of posts in the same categories you’re planning to use for the new post. Anything relevant? Link directly to the old post within the content of your new post.

Don’t stop there, though. Include a list of “related posts” at the end of each post. If you’re on WordPress, there are several plugins that can do this for you automatically (I use Similar Posts). Even if you have to create the list manually, it’s worth the effort.

Why? Because when a reader reaches the end of a post, they’re at a kind of crossroads—from there, they’ll decide whether to read something else on your blog or close it and go elsewhere. It’s a natural decision point, so giving them links to the posts most likely to interest them will encourage them to stick around.

Don’t overlook the value of the built-in archives, either. Many bloggers display their archives as a list of months on their sidebars, but you’re much better off showing categories and/or tags instead of (or in addition to) dates. Most people can pick a topic they’re interested in from a list, but the dates aren’t nearly as useful unless someone wants to read from the beginning.

For the same reason, make sure your blog theme shows a list of categories and/or tags for each post, preferably at the end (for the same reason you should have related posts at the end). This is an easy way for readers to continue reading about a topic that interests them.

Share the love with other bloggers

When you’re trying to keep your readers around, it may seem counter-intuitive to link to other blogs, but there are several good reasons for doing so:

1. Linking makes your blog posts more useful to your readers. If additional information would help clarify your post, but you haven’t covered it before, linking elsewhere is a service to your readers.
2. Linking attracts attention from other bloggers. Most bloggers check their stats and notice when someone links to them, and they appreciate it. They’re likely to check out your post, and might even link to it (or another one in the future) if it’s a good fit.
3. Linking raises your own awareness. If you’re paying attention to what’s being said elsewhere on the same topic, you’re less likely to write redundant posts, and more likely to be truly well-informed.

How you choose to link to other bloggers is up to you. If the content is highly relevant, you might feature an excerpt and link to the full post, or you can just create simple links in body of the post (similar to how you’d link back to your older posts).

Another option is to create a “further reading” section at the bottom. You can use tools like Zemanta or Sphere to automate the process, or do it manually, and you can change your approach on a per-post basis, too. You can even visually show that the links go to another site—the External Links plugin does this for WordPress, and if you’re on another platform, there are a range of methods.

One thing to keep in mind is that you can easily overwhelm your readers with too much good information. As a reader, I always prefer blogs that collect and summarize the best information available, rather than link to everything available, which makes me feel like I have to read a gazillion posts just to be marginally informed.

That said, a “further reading”-type list implies that it’s optional, and is very helpful for those who’ve read your post and want to learn more about the specific topic.

Highlight your best posts

Now that you’ve tackled links from individual posts, it’s time to think about your blog as a whole. Consider it from a first-time visitor’s perspective. Is it obvious what your site is about? If they want to learn more, where do they go to do it?

Highlighting your best posts is a great way to help answer these questions. Like most of the previous tips, you can use a plugin like Popularity Contest to create the list automatically, or you can create it by hand. Doing it yourself ensures you are promoting your very best, but can be harder to maintain. You can also do both and see which works for you.

Once you’ve created your list, there are several good places to draw attention to the best of the best; use as many as make sense to you.

1. List popular posts on your sidebar or other prominent location. You can see an example of this on Yaro Starak’s Entrepreneur-Journey.com, right at the top.
2. Create a special section under your posts. Again, the “crossroads” logic—you hit the reader at the moment they’re trying to decide what to do next.
3. Create a separate page.

Repurpose your blog posts

Bonus tip! This one is a little more work than the others, so I’m including it here as extra credit.

Once you’ve written your blog post, if you find you’ve got a winner on your hands (good traffic, or lots of comments, for instance), it might be worth re-using.

How can you re-use it? Well, you should first be prepared to put a little time into polishing or re-writing so that the new version is at least a little different from the original. How much of that you do will depend on how you intend to re-use.

Here are a few ideas:

• Submit it to an article site (see this selection of article sites). If you write a good mini-bio, you can get ongoing traffic to your blog with this method.
• Use it in a newsletter. If you have a newsletter that’s got similar-but-not-identical readership, this is a good option. Or another blogger might be interested in using it in their newsletter, too.
• Use it as the basis of an ebook or free report. If you expand it or make it more valuable in some way, you can sell it or use it as an incentive to get people to sign up for your newsletter or feed. For instance, Leo at Zen Habits compiled his best posts into an ebook that’s now for sale.

First, the dead-obvious suggestion: start with the blogs you’re already reading. Hopefully you’ve selected some high quality blogs that are written for people who are a lot like your ideal reader.

As you’re reading through posts, stay alert for points that catch your attention, give you an idea, remind you of something else, or even irritate you a little. Those things are excellent comment-fodder and, if you can communicate a response with clarity and intelligence, you’ll probably get the attention of the blogger and the readers.

Once you’ve visited all your “usual suspects,” though, where should you turn next?

Technorati

There are lots of options, but one of the best discovery tools is Technorati. Technorati’s claim to fame is their huge directory of blogs—over 110 million as of this writing. They also keep tabs on new posts, so they’re a great resource when you’re looking for fresh blog content on a specific topic.

The easiest way to find the most relevant posts is to use the search feature. Because of the absolutely massive amount of posts, you’ll want to be pretty specific with your search. Play around with it until you’re getting 3-10 relevant posts over the last couple of days. Then just read each of those posts and leave a thoughtful comment, and you’re done. (Well, almost. I like to track all of my comments with Commentful, but that’s a whole ‘nother post.)

Google BlogSearch

For our purposes, Google BlogSearch is a lot like Technorati. Often you’ll see the same posts in both places, so try them both for a few days and see which one you prefer; then just use the other briefly to pick up any that your primary method missed. Be sure to brush up on your search syntax to get the most out of Google.

CommentKahuna

I’m also growing to love a free little program called CommentKahuna (sorry, Mac folks, it’s Windows only). As far as I can tell, it’s being given away free to get people on a mailing list, but as far as I’m concerned, that’s a still a great deal for me.

So what does CommentKahuna do? It finds blogs and blog posts that match your search terms. Exactly what you need, right? And it has a couple of other features that make it even better.

One is that it can be set (under “Options”) to mark blogs that will link directly to you, without using the “nofollow” attribute. This matters because you’ll get more benefit from Google by commenting on these blogs. Similarly, you can view the resulting blogs ranked by Google Pagerank and focus your efforts on the blogs that are already Google’s favorites.

The process of commenting with CommentKahuna is very simple. First, you create a “Profile”; this is your personal information that you normally fill in along with your comment. CommentKahuna keeps track of this info and fills it in for you, which saves a step.

The program also lets you visit the blogs right through its interface, one right after another. This saves time, but more importantly for me, means I’m less likely to get distracted (my biggest time-waster of all!).

In many cases, the link that CommentKahuna gives you goes to a blog’s homepage. In this case, just take a quick browse through to see if any of the posts catch your eye. If not, move on.

I find it’s most effective for me to search for keywords that are related to my most recent post. My reasoning is twofold. First, this keeps the me from constantly getting the same suggested blogs. Second, this makes it more likely that a visitor following my link will be interested in my blog.

You’ll probably have to tweak CommentKahuna somewhat to get it “just right.” I’ve had better results limiting the search to WordPress blogs; otherwise I was getting a lot of quasi-blogs that didn’t have traditional comments. I’ve also found it important to quickly note the dates on posts; adding a comment a year after the fact doesn’t really promote the relationship unless the comment is extremely relevant.

What is blog comment marketing? It’s just a fancy way of saying “leave comments on other people’s blogs”—taking something you’re probably doing already, and just making it intentional.

Up till now, you may not have given any thought to the comments you leave on other blogs. Or maybe you have, but you aren’t great about getting around to it. Let me give you three good reasons why you should kick up your commenting.

1. Comments are the first step in forming a relationship with another blogger. Think about how you feel when you receive a comment. You read it, and if it’s thoughtful, you appreciate that someone took the time to write it. Good comments improve the quality of a blog, so you notice the folks who are helping your blog be better. As you leave comments over time, you’ll start to be recognized, and you might find yourself able to help the bloggers you interact with in the future… and vice versa.
2. You’ll get “pre-qualified” visitors. If you’re smart about where you comment, and you leave a good comment, you’ll attract not only the attention of the blogger but also the other readers. If you clearly know what you’re talking about and they’re interested in the topic, many of them will click through to your blog to find out more.
3. You’ll learn something in the process. If you read other blogs on your topic or blogs that are geared towards your ideal reader, you’ll pick up some useful knowledge in the process. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been able to answer a client’s question with something I recently read in a blog post.

But before you go crashing into comment marketing, leaving a wake of annoyed bloggers behind you, make sure you’re being a considerate commenter.

1. Only leave a comment if you can add something to the post. The point of blog comment marketing is to establish good will and useful links. If you’re not contributing something helpful, guess what: you’re not establishing good will, and the links you’re making aren’t useful. This isn’t about trying to beat the system; it’s about intentionally forming relationships. Besides, if you leave useless comments, you risk getting marked as a spammer; get marked too many times and you won’t be able to post on almost any blog (thanks to Akismet, a central database of spammers).
2. Put your blog URL in the “Website” or “URI” box and nowhere else. There’s a reason you’re asked for your website; most blogs will link your name to your site automatically when you leave a comment. To add your link anywhere else is just rude. The only exception is when you are linking to something that’s extremely relevant and specific (pretty much never your homepage), and will be considered genuinely helpful by other readers.
3. Don’t cram a bunch of marketing hype into your name. One of the current trends is to use the “Name” field as an extra place to stick your marketing message. Resist. Be consistent in what you put here (see this free PDF ebook for why it matters) but err on the side of not looking like a spammer.

My next post will talk about how to find good blog posts for your comment marketing. Until then, remember to be considerate!