Have you set up a fan page on Facebook for your blog yet? I did this recently and it was probably one of the smartest things I have done this year. Facebook is a great source of traffic but getting people to become a fan of your page can be frustrating.

Below I have come up with four tips that I believe will help you increase your fans.

1. Get At Least 20/25 Fans Straight Away

If people see that the only fan of your page is you and your mum then they are not likely to become a fan themselves. When you create your fan page try and get 20/25 fans as quickly as possible (friends, family, loved ones).

2. Invite Your Friends In Bulk

I tried to invite my Facebook Friends to become a fan one by one, I soon learnt that this was a huge mistake, especially if you have a lot of friends. What I do now is once a month I send out a bulk invite to new friends I have on my list.

3. Show Your Fan Badge On Your blog

It is not just Facebook Friends who you will want to become fans, you want anyone and everyone to become one. Place your Fan Page Badge on your blog so that visitors to your blog are aware of the page.

4. Run A Contest On Facebook

This is an idea that I have not yet tried out but I will in early 2011. We run contests on our blogs to attract new readers so why not try the same thing with Facebook? Ask people to become a fan of your fan page, then invite their friends to become fans. They will be added into a draw for some cool prizes.

This is by no means a complete list so if you have any suggestions that are not listed here then why not let us know via the comments section?

Blog commenting is something that I mention a lot, I love it and believe it is a great way to interact with other bloggers and a fantastic way to gain some backlinks and traffic at the same time.

But it is not the only way to gain traffic to your blog. After my endless posts about not putting all your eggs into one basket it would be pretty short-sighted of me not to find other ways, so I did and they are below.

Over the years I have found that it doesn’t matter if you are running a blog about making money online, football or lingerie, the following methods seem to work more or less the same.

1. Word Of Mouth

Word of mouth advertising is just as important as paying for advertising campaigns on Adwords. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell the local weirdo, tell your worst enemy, tell anybody and everybody you meet about your web site.

My friend Raven never fails to mention to everyone he meets that he runs a blog. The majority of them will check it out and some of them not only leave comments but return often.

2. Press Release

If you have an exciting product coming out, an event approaching, or just want to brag about how great your blog is, then a press release is a pretty cool and professional way to go. Believe it or not there are actually a lot of web sites online who will publish your press release and plus you can submit them to article sites like EzineArticles and Article Alley.

3. Business Cards

I do this. I know it costs money but it is very cheap and it creates a nice impression if you are talking to someone about your blog and then hand them a business card with some details and your URL on it. They will put it in their pocket or wallet and not their head where it will be lost among other thoughts.

4. Guest Post

Guest posts are also a great way of getting you and your blog noticed. There are hundreds and hundreds of popular blogs around who are desperate for guest posts (I signed up to myblogguest.com to ask for guest bloggers). In return for your guest post they will allow you to link to your blog (sometimes twice if you are lucky).

Tyrone Shum (www.tyroneshum.com/ has posted a very informative video over on his blog that gives you three great tips to help you outsource your traffic.

The video is short and sweet (just over five minutes) and he gets right down to the meat of the matter, which is great because I hate it when people waffle on when you just want to hear the important stuff.

Here is the video:

Twitter is a fantastic tool to help push just about anything, and everything, you care to think of. Whether you are running a blog or are trying to sell affiliate products, like anti-wrinkle creams, you will find a market on there.

If you are struggling to gain as much exposure on Twitter as you would have liked then why not check out the three ideas below to see if they can help you get yourself noticed.

Ask People To ‘Please Retweet’

If you post a tweet that you think is linking to something of great benefit, or very informative, then it is always a good idea to end or start the tweet with the phrase “Please retweet”. There is nothing wrong with asking this and you’ll find people more likely to do it.

Say Thank You When Someone Retweets Your Tweet

If someone is kind enough to retweet your tweet to their followers then why not show them how much you appreciate it by sending them a thank you tweet. They are more likely to do it again in the future if you say thank you. Or better still retweet one of their tweets in return.

If Someone Mentions You In A Tweet Retweet It

You may find that someone has posted a tweet that mentions you or your blog/site. If this happened then simply retweet it to your followers. This is seen as a less egotistical ways of promoting yourself.

If you are looking to set up a web site, a blog or even a forum, and you are looking for a reliable hosting provider, then maybe you should have a look at those wonderful guys over at HostGator.

And right now would be a great time because they currently have a Cyber Monday deal going on where you can get hosting at half the normal price for the first term. If if you sign up for one month, three months, or another length, you only pay half price for that first term.

HostGator have a reputation as one of the most reliable hosting providers on the internet today. They offer shared hosting, VP hosting, dedicated servers and even reseller packages if you fancy offering hosting yourself.

The deal runs out on Tuesday so I’d get in there quickly.

As somebody who encourages comments on my blogs I have noticed that there are quite a few people who leave comments but do not leave a link to their web site or blog. I really believe that this is a major mistake to make.

It is not a required field to leave a comment but by not entering your web site or blog you really are missing out on a bit of free publicity and exposure.

Below I have quickly listed four reason why you should leave a link next time you drop a comment.

1. You Gain A Backlink To Your Blog Or Site

This is the most important reason for dropping a link in my opinion. If the blog you are commenting on is do-follow then every link you leave counts as a backlink and the more backlinks you have then the more Google will value your site when it comes to Page Rank.

2. You Might Gain Traffic From Other Commentators

People are always looking for new sites and blogs to check out. If you drop your link then there is a good chance people will check out your site and you will gain more traffic, and hopefully repeat traffic if your content is good.

3. Blog You’re Commenting On Might Have CommentLuv, Extra Exposure!

My favourite blogs to comment on are ones that use a plugin called CommentLuv, this is because it shows the title and link to my last post at the bottom of my comment. So I get two links for a comment …. although only one will be counted as a backlink, it means even more chance of people checking out my blog.

4. It Helps Prove You’re Not A Bot

One of the biggest problems with the comments section of a blog, for the admin, is weeding out the spam comments left by people and bots. Some of them are incredibly crafty these days. I always check the links because if I come across a comment by someone called Outer Banks foreclosures then I’ll check the link to make double sure if it is dodgy or not.

Do you have any more reasons why you should leave a link when commenting? If you do, or if you disagree with my four, then why not drop a comment …. not forgetting to include your link.

As somebody who uses both Facebook and Twitter I know first-hand just how useful these two social networking sites are to driving traffic (most of it targeted traffic) to your blog or web site.

Like a lot of you I have a lot more people following me on Twitter than I have on my friend list on Facebook. If only we could find a simple way of enticing the people following us on Twitter into friending us on Facebook.

Well it just so happens that I have discovered a way that will only take a couple of minutes to set up.

I use a web site called SocialOomph which has a fantastic feature where you can send a welcome DM to every new Twitter follower. The great thing is that it will keep sending out the welcome DM until you turn it off.

You could tell it to send a DM like the one below:

Hi, thanks for following me. Why not connect with me on Facebook as well? http://www.facebook.com/ineeddiscipline

I have found that quite a few of the real followers (you get a lot of bots on Twitter) will send me a friend request so I think it is well worth giving it a shot, it will only take a couple of minutes.

I have spoken quite a lot recently, on this blog and on message boards, about how important commenting on other blogs can be in order to drive traffic to your own blog. For this post I wanted to tip it around 90 degrees and talk about attracting comments to your own blog.

When you first created your blog, and started writing content, did you do what I used to do and keep checking your admin panel to see if anyone had left you a comment on one of your posts? How often did you use to check? I would check probably about once an hour.

I don’t know about you but it used to drive me absolutely crazy.

It took me a good couple of months to go from watching my posts go without comments to thinking of ways to entice comments. I have listed five of those ways below.

1. Make Your Blog Do-Follow

This is something that I now do from day one with all my blogs. If you make your blog do-follow then it means when someone comments and they leave their web site URL then it will help them with their PR.

This encourages people to make comments better than anything else I have used.

2. Turn Off Your Spam Filter

If receiving tons of spam comments is not something you are concerned with then you could turn off any spam filter plugin you have running. I would not recommend this but then again I do receive thousands of spam comment posts a day.

3. Install Top Commentator Or CommentLuv Plugin

If setting your blog to do-follow is something that does not appeal to you then why not install a couple of plugins like top commentator and CommentLuv? What these two plugins do is reward commentators for commenting by publishing a do-follow link to their web site.

4. Run A Competition

This is something that I have tried and found partial success with. You run a contest and people enter by leaving a comment. It is as simple as that. You’ll be surprised how many people will comment when prizes are on the line.

The only drawback to this is that you will find lots of comments like “put my name down”, “I’m in” and “good luck everyone”.

5. Write A Very Controversial Post

This is something that not a lot of people will be able to pull off without coming across as an idiot. If you write a controversial post then you will make it almost impossible for the reader to leave without leaving his thoughts.

Be prepared to get some heated replies though and it isn’t something I’d recommend if you want to bond with your readers.

Have you found a way to attract comments that I have not listed? Why not leave a comment and let us know what they are?

am well aware that this post might not appeal to a lot of people but I do know that I attract quite a few newbie bloggers to this blog. So I thought I’d put out a post that was aimed mainly at them. More experienced bloggers might learn something as well.

When you first launch your blog you will find that Google is not very kind to you and you are receiving next to no traffic, apart from your friends and family members. There are many ways of increasing your traffic, you can use SEO, social media or advertising on PPC networks.

But these tend to cost money, or some considerable level of expertise, to really see the results. That is why the big bloggers like Dan Rowse, Jeremy Schoemaker and John Chow seem to get fantastic results from them because they can afford to hire experts to do them.

But what about people like me? People who don’t have lots of money to spend on outside help? People who used to think that the term SEO was just a fancy title given to an executive like a CEO.

Below you will find a small list of ways to help that will not cost you an arm and a leg and do no require a lot of expertise.

1. Link Exchange With Other Blogs

If you have the time then why not contact other people who have blogs and ask them to swap links with them? This is no secret and has been around for years. The only problem with this is that some blog owners might try and cheat you by removing your link so keep checking their site.

2. Buy Links From Popular Blogs

This is something that I have never done because I do not agree with doing it. You can approach blogs and offer to pay them to link to your blog. The more popular the blog, and the higher their PR, the more you will have to pay.

Google comes down hard if you are caught doing this so be careful.

3. Guest Post On Other Blogs

If you are good at writing then you can offer to write a guest post on another blog. The blog owner gets some fresh content and you get to put a link or two in that article promoting your blog.

4. Write Articles For Article Directories

This is something that I am just now starting to experiment with myself. If you have some spare time then cobble together a selection of articles that are about your chosen niche and submit them to article directories. Don’t forget to mention your blog in them.

5. Post Regularly On Forums

I bet you are a member of at least two message boards. The first thing I do when I join a message board is I place the link to my blog in my sig. Every time I make a thread or reply to one my link shows up in my sig. I get quite a nice bit of traffic and link love from this.

Of course it will help if the message board you are part of is a popular one and you do have to post quite regularly (I make a habit of posting at least ten times a day).

6. Blog Commenting

This is quite easily my favourite way of link building and driving traffic to my blog. Why is it my favourite? Because it is free and because nine times out of ten I will stumble across great ideas for me to create posts about on my own blog.

Never spam blogs though, always try and make sure you have something to say instead of “nice post”. And try and find out if the blog is do-follow, these are the ones you should concentrate on more.

I stumbled across a neat little piece of software today. Something that I believe could help me (and you) gain some extra traffic from Twitter and it has nothing to do with setting up multiple accounts or spamming thousands of people.

When you post a tweet on Twitter there is normally a link under the tweet that says from Tweet Deck, Web, or what ever program you are using to send the message. This means that lots of companies are getting free traffic from piggybacking on your tweets.

That is where TweetBrand comes to the rescue and helps you take back those free links.

What TweetBrand does it is removes this link and replaces it with a link that you can decide upon. For example you can have a link to your own site and also anchor text of whatever you want.

It is free and it runs on Adobe Air which is also free. There is a very informative video to help you through the process which took me about 4 minutes to complete.

I am trying it on http://twitter.com/indblog so why not have a look and see if it is something that might interest you?