There are over 133 million blogs, with most bloggers hailing from the United States. Blogging is now seen as an official profession and there are just as many paid bloggers in the U.S. as there are lawyers.

Yet, we’ve only just heard of a marginal percentage of blogs compared to this vast number. This is for three reasons. The first two are clumped together, and they are site presentation and blogger voice. You need to have a compelling and well designed/navigated site if you’re going to draw people in. You also need great and unique content with a consistent voice. Sometimes you can get away without the perfect site, but you’ll never get away with having less than great content.

That said, the third reason is because some blogs are marketed and others aren’t. Of those blogs that are marketed, an even smaller percentage of them are marketed well. These days it isn’t enough to just have a social media presence via the routine Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. Now you’ve got to go out and do a whole lot more to compete for your readers, keep their attention and then earn their trust and business. This isn’t an impossible task. It’s just a matter of knowing what the right tools are – like the ones listed here:

Never Underestimate the Power of Comments

Comments are blog gold. The more comments your page and posts have, the higher your ranking and visibility in search indexes. It used to be a lot easier to get comments even if you met the two reasons listed above. But social media has killed that for us. Today’s readers are lazy and don’t consider the worth of comments on the actual blog page. So as soon as you post a link to Facebook, as you’ve been taught to do, you’ll get a stream of readers (if you’ve built up an audience) commenting there instead of your page. While it’s great to have those comments there, it’s also important to get them on your page.

Train your readers by creating pages where the content cannot just be summed up with a Facebook tagline. This requires your readers to actually read the post, which leaves them landing upon the comment section. Try pairing great photos so that you reader is drawn to the teaser posted on social sites, but has to go to your page to view more. You can also encourage behavior by offering rewards for comments with unique or monthly draws, where each comment by a unique user enters them in a drawing for something of worth to them.

The Email Marketing One-on-One

Who wouldn’t love their audience’s undivided attention, the focus of hundreds if not thousands at a time, without actually spending the time it takes to meet them all? This is exactly what email marketing provides, and yet it’s one of the easiest and often most overlooked ones in your content marketing arsenal. While in your mind’s eye email marketing starts with newsletters, there’s actually a whole lot more to it than just that. Unfortunately, more blog managers and small business owners forego this option simply because they don’t understand it or think it’ll take too much time. Nothing could be further from the truth. The right email marketing campaign is not only incredibly powerful but also incredibly easy to use.

Understanding the Nature of the Web

All internet gurus agree that the web isn’t just a library of content anymore; it’s a rushing river. This means that content is always flowing and changing. It’s not enough to just have content, but you’ve got to plug it across all the right platforms – a time consuming task. Luckily, some kind soul understood our frustration and created TwitterFeed, a one stop shop for getting your blog content pushed to social channels as soon as it’s published. Think of it as automated RSS feeds evolved for the social web.

It’s said that “Content is not king,” but rather “Seeding and promotion tactics of said content is king.” With these tools you should be well on your way to reaping what you’ve sown.