What is blog networking? In my own words Blog Networking simply means making an effort to not only visit other bloggers and leave intellectual comments based on their posts content but to offer valuable articles on your blog that will offer your audience something to learn from such as providing help in a relationship situation, how to guides and similar.

The first step to successful blog networking is to reply to all comments you receive on your blogs everyday. I know, I know, this is time consuming and hard work for sure, but I will be honest returning comments to others sites or replying via email directly to their comment will make them put a person behind the blog posts and really feel as if the time they spent on their site was important to you. Believe me, returning blog comments is certainly something that I get behind on, and I am trying to be more proactive about it by personally visiting each commenter’s site to return the comment love or simply replying to their comment via email. Do not be offended if the person you reply to never comes back to comment or doesn’t reply via email back to you, some people are just not going to reply back. We can’t determine who is going to enjoy this personal treatment and who will not like it, so your best bet is to do this to all.

Did a person who commented on your blog seem like someone who may be interested in you bloggy buddies blog? If yes, maybe include a link to “sites you may like” within the reply email or newsletter so that your readers can now find other blogs that may be of benefit to them. This is a way to pay it forward and truly network. After all networking is all about creating connections, not only for yourself, but for others as well. It’s a great idea to get some blog buddies and each of you link to each other within your newsletter or reply comments area so that you can help network with each other and build your blog readership together.

Attend Blog Conferences! Yes you should attend blog conferences, especially if you are building your blog as a way to get out there and meet others or if it’s your business. Meeting other bloggers and attending seminars at the conferences will build up your connections on a more personal level. Just think of that blog you read daily, have you ever wondered what the person behind the text looks like, what their personality is in real life? I often wonder and last Summer in July 2009 I was able to meet my best virtual friend, who is still to this day my best friend in the whole wide world, MommaDJane. We keep each other motivated as best we can and 9 times out of 10 when we think of a new project or new way to make money or an idea for an article we share the idea with each other. That is what blog networking is all about; helping others while helping yourself at the same time and forming strong bonds with others.

Overall I do believe blog networking is very important as a blogger because it will help you build character in a virtual world as well as help you to learn more because as you build up your blog network the more you will learn and the more you learn the more you can share! It’s a win win situation!

So what have you done lately to start blog networking?