How to get yourself noticed in the blogosphere?

I was chatting with an acquaintance who wanted some advice on how to establish their startup (actually the idea) with a target segment of internet users. Not that I’m an expert in this area, but I did give him my two cents, and I thought I’ll put them up here as well.

The assumption is that the company/personal blog will be the primary vehicle to ‘establish’ that connect. So here are some tips on successful blogging:

1. Write regularly and briefly (heard of Flash Fiction?!). Most blog readers, read regularly but have a very short attention span
2. Monitor your traffic (including your RSS feed). Analyze what kind of topics are working (getting more traffic, comments) and which are not.
3. Subscribe to RSS feeds of active bloggers. Keep commenting on their blogs actively - it’s easier to get noticed like that
4. SEO is not dead. Optimize your blog and try to own some keywords - show up on the first page for keywords that matter. Be diligent about tagging each of your posts
5. Create groups on Facebook, Orkut and similar community sites. People notice groups because of friend feeds and typically subscribe themselves as well (me too) - so you can get some eyeballs by leveraging the chain effect
6. Get your blog listed on as many blog aggregator sites as you can

Of course these are basics. More professional help is available at Blogworks run by a person called Rajesh Lalwani. And no, I’m not getting paid to write about them. Just that I discovered them lately and found them interesting!