Tips Blog

Network Effects
The beautiful thing about peer relationships is network effects. When you get the attention of one blogger it’s not just him or her that finds out about you. Their entire network of influence also learns about you and, better still, you receive an implied or direct recommendation. This is a key factor because the recommendation creates credibility, which results in more attention sent your way.
Blogging, by its nature, is built on networks. When one top blogger links to you, then suddenly a whole host of bloggers also know about you. Chances are there are a few more top bloggers in that new audience you just acquired, some of whom may link to you in the future. This process continues over and over each time a link is sent from one blog to another – you just have to crack into ever-larger networks.
Start With Your Peers
I call this peer relationship marketing for a reason – you should begin with your peers.
A peer is someone in a similar situation to you. Generally speaking, in the world of blogging, a person is your peer if you cover a similar topic area or target the same audience, and your current level of exposure/traffic is around the same.
Ignore:
To refuse to pay attention to; to disregard.
One of the mistakes new bloggers make when they hear the advice that they should go out and make friends with other bloggers is they shoot for the stars immediately.
The A-List, the really popular blogs, are swamped with contacts every day. You might get lucky and find a really nice A-List blogger who has the time to respond to every single personal email he or she receives, but let me tell you from experience, once your blog gets well known you become inundated with requests from the public and it’s not realistic to personally respond to them all.
In most cases if you just email a top blogger out of the blue you won’t get a reply. The very top blogs simply receive too many requests each day and can’t respond to them all. You can get the attention of top bloggers if you are a peer (a top blogger too). Once you have traffic it’s easier to get the attention of others who have traffic – your credibility is already established. Most people reading this report won’t be in that situation.
It’s a much smarter practice to shoot for relationships with people like you. Your true peers – bloggers with similar traffic and goals as yours – are more likely to be open to making contact with you, to doing traffic exchanges by linking to each other’s articles and to making friends with other bloggers. Form friendships with people like you, and work together to share traffic and build communication channels.
If you are having trouble convincing others of the effectiveness of peer relationship marketing and you find people are ignoring you, consider expanding their horizons by sending them a copy of this blueprint. They may just come back to you eager to share traffic once they realize how much you both can benefit from working together.