BlogCatalog social networking strategy

I took part into a Technorati experiment a little while ago. It is now time to take part in a BlogCatalog experiment. Don't wait any more time go through the list and start lobbying the people you like.

As a new blogger in a very crowded blogsphere, I struggle to push my voice out there and fail to grab some of these juicy Internet links. As such BlogCatalog is an easy way to increase your traffic from fellow bloggers. All you need is to have a few posts and a bit of history then you can register your blog.

When you have done so, you will see some curious BlogCatalog users popping in. Then you can start networking with your fellow BlogCataloguers and market your blog(s) to them. Don't forget that when you visit a blog, you then become visitor of that blog and will be listed on the BlogCatalog recent viewers widget possibly exposing your blog(s) to ever more people. Also don't forget to be polite and thank your visitors to entice them to come back.

However you must have a good strategy. Don't just go random that is time wasting: think ... then think again. Basically you need to scan through BlogCatalog users to find people:

* with same tastes as you so that they and their readers read your blog(s),
* with lots of inbound links (or contacts) so that you get some of that juicy traffic,
* and finally friendly enough to reply or link back to you (or add you as a contact) so that you increase you ranking.

Ranking is visible in BlogCatalog on the users profile (see mine not so good). That is all nice and good but surely you don't want to scan the 1000's of users to find out the right people. Well, that is where you need to be clever. Just ask Google magic search engine, basically type this in Google (if you are down right lazy just click the link below):

"site:http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/"

What you get is the list of BlogCatalog profile ordered by ranking thanks to the Google magic. That means very likely the profiles with the highest number of inbound links (not quite sure as the Google magic is kept secret and we can only speculate about the recipe). You can also add specific search keyword(s) like photography to find like minded people. Although this does not mean number of contacts that should list the profiles with the most external visitors. Anyhow that's the job done.

This strategy will maximize your return on investment and make you more visible in the Internet space (more specifically in the BlogCatalog sphere). Of course it is a little hard work and to make sure it is worth your while, why not calculating your return on investment and let me know how you are doing:

"ROI = number of inbound link(s) gained / hours spent networking"

Notes: number of visitors is less relevant as they tend to vanish quickly, inbound links get you new visitors for ever. I thought I would use minutes but I think we need to be reasonable here one new inbound link per hour is pretty good.

Don't wait any more time go through the list and start lobbying the people you like. Don't forget to tell me how it goes by posting a little comment about this strategy!