1) Exploiting the forums to the maximum advantage - Forums is an important place where like minded people meet to discuss and find solutions related to their topics. So this is the right platform for any internet marketer to exploit it to their advantage. If you can really create a buzz thread which is related to your topics and if you can keep that thread alive for at least a month on the top this will generate a massive flow of traffic to your blog or website. Internet Marketer like John Chow’s Make Money Online Blog www.johnchow.com and Rand Fisher of SEOMoz and many more does these kind of awesome trick which make their thread to stay on top for weeks after weeks. As you all know popular forums have 1000’s of members hanging around day after day so when they see that popular thread they will start reply or comment on that thread which is a great way to promote your blog or website which will bring in tons of targeted traffic. If you fail with couple of threads start a new one until you find which one clicks for you. Check this Digital Point Forum Thread to believe.

2) Write articles to promote your blog - You all have heard about article submission to directories which is an awesome way to build inbound links but If you are pull a controversial article which will trigger a topic of discussion in social networking sites like Digg, del.icio.us  feedmarker  BlinkList  StumbleUpon  and more you will get so much traffic that you won’t be able to handle it.  I some of the some of these controversial articles been Digged in sites like Digg and which stays there for weeks can drive targeted traffic like hell to your blog. I know write a creative article which will be of interest is a difficult task. You can hire writer to do that and pass your ideas to them to write an article which is no one have ever read that before related to that certain topic. This strategy will increase link popularity of your site without much effort. Bloggers will link to that article and your blog and will make a viral effect.

3) Create a circle of bloggers network - This is a new idea which I don’t think bloggers might have not tried it before. Do joint ventures with other bloggers. Some of the A Listed bloggers do that. They interact with like minded bloggers and write about each other on their respective blogs so actually what they are doing is exchange of visitors as well as link love. But I have a better Idea too if you could implement that you can create a blog which will be not only successful and popular but also drive traffic to your respective blog. If you can create a team of 10 or 20 bloggers who all write on the same topics and write posts on each other’s blog this will great idea. You blog will be added with fresh content as well as interesting articles and topics, But this could be a failure too if you don’t have certain set of rules. Each blogger creates or write posts on each other a day can help your blog add more content also if you are out of ideas other will fill in your blog with paying a dime. So if you are monetizing your blog with Adsense or other kind of advertisements it is a great way to earn money for bloggers with little effort. A joint venture with a circle of bloggers is a great theme to exchange visitors, exchange content which will increase link popularity as well.

4) Create Controversy using your blog posts - IF you are able to write a controversial posts on your own blogs which can trigger comments from other bloggers is a unique way to promote your blog by itself. This is common among bloggers to create a controversy so that you will get attention to your blog. SEO experts call these strategies as link baiting where it causes a viral effect on your blog. Recently I came across a blog which was able to drive traffic to his site because he cloned the design of problogger.net. This story is about Amblogger.net who created a buzz by copying the design of Problogger.net. This Amateur blogger Vince Chan launched his blog by copying the design of Problogger.net. I won’t recommend this to anyone but the idea behind this is what we have to think about. Getting attention was the idea that Vince Chan would have had in his mind if he really would have like the design there are 100’s of blog design theme available freely on the web. But why did he choose Darren’s Problogger.net Chan was sure that this can get him some attention in the blogsphere.

5) Disapprove other bloggers when you find a wrong post - Criticize and appreciating each other bloggers is common among on the web. But Criticizing gets more attention than appreciation in any field. This is helping the person who is Criticizing and the person who is criticized. If you are planning to do this strategy don’t over do it so that it will offend someone. The best way to do is if you visit other blogs and find some posts which the facts mentioned in it is incorrect, then you can implement this strategy. Some of other ways are if you know the other blogger very well just tell him in advance about this personally and go head and tell him this is just a way to increase the popularity which is good for both the bloggers.

6) Create a Toppers list - This techniques has become common among bloggers to come out of a list like top best blogs, top 100 RSS subscribers so you might be thinking what really this kind of lists do? List on blogs can get attention like top 10 Adsense earners, but the top 10 people listed won’t be the really top 10 people. But when visitors see this can start chipping in few more that they know by leaving a comment on the blog. Recently this strategy was nicely implemented by sellmademinds.com A post by Al Carlton on this blog created a list of top RSS subscribers and within a day there was 270 comments replying to the post as well as 450 persons Digged at Digg. So this is not one example there are several other bloggers use these strategies to gain popularity. This blog www.selfmademinds.com is just a month old can you believe such a young blog can get so many comments on a single day. I am sure out of that 270 person who just commended on the blog at least half of them will be frequent readers in the days to come.

7) Yahoo Answers - I don’t think people is using this technique to drive traffic to their blogs. At yahoo answers 100’s of people visit to find answers for their problem. So if you find questions about your topics give valuable solutions to them. This not only helps them to come your blog to read more about the topics for what they need answers also they will come down to buy your affiliate products which is listed on the blog. I am coming out with another post in the feature about how to market your blog with Yahoo Answers very soon.

Hope this strategies will help you to launch your blog and get instant targeted traffic.

Squidoo developed and marketed by Seth Godin. The idea about this site is that anyone can a squidoo website on any topic and Seth Godin believes that everyone is an expert in their own rights. Anyone can create Squidoo web pages which is also called Squidoo lens on any topic they like and add content.

Squidoo is build on other Web.2.0 technologies like Flickr and Youtube.

In this blog post I would like to present how to market your website and drive traffic using Squidoo.

1) Make yourself an expert - When Seth Godin decided to develop Squidoo he was trying to overcome the problem of not providing the right results when a search queries about it. Squidoo does exactly what he had in mind. Anybody can be expert in his/her own field and at Squidoo they can develop a lens where you can add your own knowledge and expertise on that subject in which you are an expert. So that a Squidoo visitors gets the information what they where looking for.

2) Traffic generation - Squidoo lens can generate massive traffic if your lens have important and unique information which people are looking for. Squidoo can generate traffic through the links to your blogs or websites. Squidoo allows adding text, images, website banners and text ads into your lens.

3) Article Marketing - If you have a very interesting articles which you have wrote you can promote that through squidoo which is very easy and cool. Squidoo allows you to add links module where you can list your own article on your own squidoo lens, all you have to do is type the URL of the written articles and Squidoo will immediately include the entire information without the task of re-entering.

4) Search Engine Love - Search engine like Social Networking sites since it user generate content so you Squidoo lens will appear on top of these search engine like Google, Yahoo and MSN and that in turn will drive traffic to your site. Search engine has high value to Squidoo lenses because of the fresh content updated every now and then. This is an easy and fast way of search engine optimization of your website or blog.

5) Add more Squidoo lenses - A key to increase traffic is to add several numbers of lenses which is keyword rich and go for long tail keywords which come up on top of search engines fast and drives massive traffic. There is not limit for add lenses in Squidoo you can add how much ever you want. This is an effective way to drive traffic to your website or blog.

6) Get high quality backlinks - Links are key for any website ranking in search engine. Squidoo lenses are very good link getter. Squidoo pages are very high page ranks and getting a link from these lenses can improve your search engine ranking of your websites and blogs.

Social Bookmarking is the new trend among Internet Marketers and also is an important part of link building and generating direct traffic to your site or blog. One of the most important reasons of using social bookmarking is to get the attention of the search engines for your marketing campaign.

There is several advantage of having your blog on a sub domain as well as disadvantages. Most of my blogs are on the sub domain but I too have domain which is installed on the main domain. It is better to have a blog on sub domain if the main domain is a website and these blog posts can help you to update and release latest news about the company.

By having a subdomain blog on the main site you’re newly created pages and product can be indexed fast by search engines. It also brings the newly created page link popularity and you can also do deep linking to your pages inside the main domain. Subdomain blogs doesn’t need to be update that often since subscribers to that blog is quite few. Because the visitor are interested in their main site.

Other advantage of having a subdomain blog to the main site is all the posts added into the blog will be treated as fresh content and the chances of the search engine bots indexing the main site is fast.

Disadvantage of having a subdomain is it not your main site and visitors will be little interested in visiting the subdomain blog. Visitors think the blog will be mostly related to news about product and services of the company and there won’t be much interesting content to read on a daily basis.

My blog is on a subdomain but that didn’t hinder from getting traffic to my blog. My blog stat brings me in daily 150-200 visitors which are not bad for a subdomain blog. My visitors to the main site bring in between 4000-4500 visitors a day which is not bad too. Since it offers free resource for webmaster and small business organization.

Even Matt Cutts blog is also hosted his blog on a subdomain and the Main page has just got a link to the blog but that doesn’t stop visitors reading this blog. His blog is one of the popular blog among the SEO and internet marketers.

The bottom line is having a blog either on subdomain or the main domain is not a problem as far as you are able to provide quality content which will drive traffic to your blog. So the key is unique quality content which is interesting to your readers.