4 Tips for Deepening Your Blogging Friendships

I really enjoyed the discussion over last week's 5 Tips for Being a Friendly Blogger and well, I thought of some more tips! These are not necessary but are excellent tools for ease of use and building strong ties.

1) Register Your Blog with Technorati.
Technorati is the devil we all rely on. It gives us bloggers the gentle little pat on our egos as we slowly watch our authorities tick upwards. Does it say anything about our self-worth? No. Does it say anything about our blog's worth? Not really. Yet a high Technorati authority will provide greater opportunities for your blog and get you a little attention. Always nice. Unfortunately, it seems Technorati has been having problems lately, but so far nothing has really stood up to take its place.

2) Ping your Blog Regularly.
Once registered with Technorati you can set this up automatically. Or you can use a service like Ping-o-matic. Last week, I mentioned the importance of linking to other blogs. It's important that once you link to them, you also ping your blog so that everyone else out there in internet land knows that link exists. This is also good for your own blog! When they see you've linked to them, they will most likely come visit you. (Unless thousands of people are linking to them everyday)

3) Make Subscribing to Your Blog Easy.
The best way to do this is to use Feedburner. Feedburner offers your readers the chance to subscribe via RSS in a reader or by email. It's very user friendly (I'm not techie at all!!!) and once you get it set up be sure to put that big orange button in an easy to see spot on your blog. I always look for that when I come across a blog I want to remember. There's so little time and so many blogs competing for attention that if it takes any extra effort, I'm unlikely to bother. (sorry!) Feedburner also lets you see how many people are subscribing to your blog which is another way to get one of those self-pats on the back. (and then wonder why none of them comment....;)

4) Invite Other Bloggers for Guest Posts or Interviews.
A great way to strengthen your ties with other bloggers is to invite them to write something for your blog. Who doesn't like to be hosted at someone else's party? It's a great compliment to be asked to contribute something to another blog. I would recommend inviting bloggers that you love or who have a similar niche. Or, you can have a theme and invite bloggers to submit posts. (I recently tried this and it was almost a complete bust--you live you learn! I have seen it done very successfully) Or maybe you just want to interview them about something you blog about. For example, Kat at The Secret Life of Kat has done this with her Parent's University.

So if you are really interested in going deeper with this blogging thing, believe me..other bloggers are going to love it if you're registered with Technorati, you are pinging your blog, you make subscribing easy, and you show your love for them by sacrificing some precious blog time to highlight them.

Any more tips?