SITS stands for The Secret is in the Sauce, where the  ”secret to success is support.” It’s a very simple idea, executed with panache. Here’s how it works:

1. Embed the Sitstahood badge in your sidebar. (See the girlie badge to the right.) It alerts other SITS Girls “that you love comments, and that you will visit bloggers who comment on your blog!”
2. Comment a lot. Go to Sitstahood every day, if possible, to comment on the daily post. This means you showed up for Roll Call. Then follow the 3 links for the Featured Blogger and leave comments. Featured Bloggers are selected from the Roll Call, so that only active SITS Girls are featured.
3. Supply links to your 3 best posts to be considered for Featured Blogger.
4. Follow Sitsahood (RSS feed, Facebook, Twitter, Google Friend Connect). Does that seem like a lot? Well, it’s all part of networking.
5. Subscribe to Sits Girls email so you remember to make your daily visit and follow through on commenting.

I don’t know how long Sitstahood has been operating, but it has a Google PageRank of 5 and an Alexa Traffic Rank of 107,486 (21,346 US). Not a bad back link to have. I’m joining right now.

How easy is it to be a Featured Blogger? I don’t know. If you’re a SITS Girl, comment here and let me know your experience. Remember, the secret to blogging success is mutual support.

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For example, I want to attract traffic to my niche blog, àlaFurBabies, which is about pets. So I created a sub-niche Squidoo lens about a popular dog breed, the Bichon Frise, that links back to àlaFurBabies.

Theory Behind Traffic Driving with Mini-Blogs

In theory, A sub-niche mini-blog that reaches a narrow (but avid) audience will rank higher in search engine results because there is less competition. In my example, there are fewer sites devoted to “Bichon Frise” than there are for “Pets.” My Bichon mini-blog still needs to compete for search engine results (there’s always that caveat), but among far fewer competing sites.

The mini-blog that ranks is in position to link interested visitors to the main website. You can create numerous mini-blogs on different topics that all relate to the main website topic, thereby driving targeted traffic to the main site from many sources that you control. Remember, regardless of the competitive standing of your mini-blogs, they are providing topic-related back links to your main site.

Is this traffic-building method effective? I don’t know. I’m experimenting! Undoubtedly, there are many factors involved.

Creating Back Links

With a mini-blog you create a back link for your main site, improving search engine results. Because the back link from the mini-blog is topic-related to your main site, it’s a more valuable link in the estimation of search engines.

In addition, your mini-blog has a different IP address from your main blog. This is important for those of you who have a paid hosting service that allows you to have several blogs, and who might be considering linking from one to another. If all your blogs on the hosting service have a shared IP address, the back links are less impressive to search engines.

By the way, don’t link from your main site to the mini-blog. Cross-linking looks like swapped links to search engines, and reduces the credence they give your back link. Just use your mini-blog to link to your main site, and leave it at that.

More Blogs to Manage

What are the drawbacks with this method? First, you need to create and maintain another blog. Secondly, you now have two blogs to which you’re trying to drive traffic. (Sounds crazy, heh?) If you create multiple mini-blogs, there is even more work to manage.

What’s the up-side? Mini-blogs are relatively fast and easy to set up. Nor do they require rigorous maintenance.

With time being a precious commodity, how frequently should you update a mini-blog? At the beginning you must update often, so that search engines will notice it. Once the back link to your main site is established, you can ease up a bit. TIP: Choose a mini-blog topic that is easy for you to update!

Belong to a Blogging Community

Once you create a mini-blog, such as a Squidoo lens, you belong to a blogging community. The more involved you are, the more attention you can attract to your site. There are always interesting benefits in community, but it does require more of your time and energy to contribute in a meaningfully way.

Many Choices for Mini-Blogging

If you like the idea of mini-blogging, Squidoo is good place to begin. There is a helpful “Health” assessment system that alerts you to pitfalls as you create a lens. You can click the “Health” tab, for instance, to see if the tags you entered for your lens are search engine friendly or if they need to be improved.

But there are plenty of others to check out: Tumblr, Posterous, HubPages, and Vox, to name a few. Each try to offer something unique. Tumblr has a tremendous array of themes from which to choose. Several allow you to post via email. A lot of them let you share in advertising revenue.

Some people create hundreds of HubPages and Squidoo lens. Find the super bloggers at these services and study them. Aside from the benefit of creating back links and driving traffic to your main site, reportedly there is money to make on the mini-blogs themselves from advertising!

Are You Into Mini-Blogging?

If you’re already into mini-blogs, what has been your experience? Do you utilize them to direct traffic to another site? Which services do you use? Have you earned advertising revenue? What’s your best mini-blogging tip?

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The beautiful and luscious food blog, DanaSlatkin.com, received the Newbie Blogger with the Most Votes award with 53 votes. From a purely design perspective, that is right on!

You may be wondering how àlaBuzz fared. Not too shabbily, considering it’s a new do-it-yourselfer. àlaBuzz ranked in the top 25% with 21 votes. Thank you for all the votes!!

Never-the-less, from a promotional view, even 111 votes over a 30-day period is unimpressive. We all need to do better!

Promoting a blog well takes a lot of time. I’m currently writing a series on Daily Blogging Goals. The series looks at posting on a regular basis (naturally) and organizing promotional activities. Understanding what resources can be used for site promotion, and how to use them smoothly and quickly, is vital for developing an online presence and managing reputation.

Let’s prepare now to raise the bar significantly for future promotional contests. All promotional activities, contests included, increase site traffic: A blogger’s everlasting goal.

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Organize Daily Blogging Goals

You’ll need an aid to help you remember what you have done, and with whom you have connected. Try organizing daily blogging goals with charts. This provides a visual aid to help you stay on target, conserve time, and track productivity.

You might want to set up a free dataset at Socrata. A learning curve is involved, but you will be able to create and store a huge spreadsheet-like chart that will be very efficient for the purpose of tracking daily blogging goals over a long period of time.

You can also utilize a bookmarking site, like Delicious, to assist organization. Use tags to list the sites you use most often, and link directly to them from one convenient place. For instance, I use:

• “myblogs” to tag all my blogs
• “blogdirec” to tag the blogging communities and directories I have joined

Be realistic about what the time you have available to work on the goals you set. It’s better to aim for consistency rather than prolific, but sporadic, activity. With practice, you’ll accomplish your daily blogging goals more smoothly and quickly. Increase your goals, or add new ones in the future, when you’re ready.

Posting Blog Content with Cross-Links

Encourage search engines to crawl you site by posting new content 3-5 times a week. TIP: Create several blogs and cross-link related posts whenever appropriate! This will strengthen your online presence, and lay the groundwork for a better PageRank by providing search engines with external links that lead to your site.

Consider your primary blog the hub. Secondary blogs are spokes on the wheel. Use simple blog services for your secondary blogs. For instance, Tumblr, Posterous, Squidoo, and Vox are great services for sub-niche and personal interest blogs. They beautifully lend themselves to short, quick posts featuring multimedia.

The following table illustrates a basic chart of blog posts and cross-links for a particular week. There are three rows devoted to each blog listed (the empty rows may appear compressed). If I achieve three posts per blog during the week, the “Post Title” column will be completely filled. If I manage to write posts that are related to another blog or a post at another blog, it will be noted in the “Cross-Link” column.

Creating a chart like this one reinforces your motivation to write a certain number of posts each week. It also reminds you to write occasional posts in your secondary blogs that relate to the topic of your main blog, thus creating cross-links.

Note that your secondary sub-niche or personal blogs should actually target a different audience than your primary blog. Then the cross-links from the secondary blogs will help to introduce new visitors to your primary blog who normally might not seek the information that they’ll find there. Should they discover the focus of your primary blog of interest, they may return!

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Paradoxically, on this very mountain peak you will soon be confronted with raw existential questions. What is your place in the Blogosphere? Does anyone know or care your blog is alive? Is there a Patron Saint of Blogging whom you may petition? Frankly, the answers to these questions are “None,” “No,” and “Nada.”

It’s all “zip” until you develop an online presence. However, engaging in this process will restore your joy. Some call it “reputation management.” Others refer to it as “personal branding.” But it’s really just about connecting and networking with other bloggers. You’ll make friends and develop valuable contacts. Plus, it is the most fun and personally rewarding way to promote organic (free) traffic to your blog.

To get the best results from your online reputation management, you need to have realistic goals, keep your focus, and be consistent. I suggest your organic promotional campaign include two or more of the following components:

• Your blog posts
• Blogging communities and directories
• Social networking sites
• Commenting on other blogs
• Bookmarking sites
• Analytics

Once you get organized, it’s smooth sailing. A chart will keep you on target, conserve time, track productivity, help you remember what you have done and with whom you have connected.

Next time: “Organizing Daily Blogging Goals and Posting Content to Enhance Online Presence”

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