Improve Your Blog Karma

For years now I've been beating the drum of "relationship building" when it comes to gaining respect (and links) for your web site. Bloggers, perhaps more so than any other web site owner, stand to benefit immensely from putting that idea into action. So how do you improve your karma when it comes to blogging? Well, you could start by checking out what Rohit Bhargava of Influential Interactive Marketing has to say.

Rohit lays down ten fantastic ways to improve your karma that any blogger can put into play. In fact, the simple truths of each of the ten suggestions line up with my own "you could embroider this on a throw pillow" philosophies.

A few of my favorites...

Respond to emails. This is tough when you have a high volume of unsolicited emails, but the idea that someone took time to write directly to you should make it enough of a priority to respond. Obviously, this applies to personally written messages, and not to email blasts of press releases. Those are rarely worth a response.

Make connections. In social settings, the gold standard for making connections is introducing two people to one another who later get married. Blogging is no different. If you can be the person making these connections between individuals that may not have met otherwise, you will be remembered by both for your efforts.

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Comment and participate. This may be part of earlier suggestions, however the idea that you need to be a participant online rather than just an observer is key to this belief. If you expect others to communicate and add comments to your blog, you need to be online doing the same for others. Without participation, it is difficult to belong to a community online or build relationships with others.