Who are the top bloggers in your field?

In Chapter 40, we discussed the opportunity of linking to other bloggers as a way of gaining exposure and building your link structure. Some people hate that idea because they see it as a direct endorsement of their biggest competitors.

If you feel that way, consider changing your mind.

The abundance mentality will win in the future. It’s already winning. The very first thing you should do as a blogger is identify the top players in your field. Who’s the very best? Who do you respect? Who has the biggest audience? Once identified, you should literally trip over yourself trying to publicly endorse their work.

Your willingness to reference these industry leaders directly and link to their resources immediately increases your own stature. You look like a peer rather than an adoring fan. It makes you look like a leader yourself.

I highly recommend identifying and subscribing to the top bloggers in your field. Technorati is a great place to find them. So is Google BlogSearch. For me, it includes people like Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, John Reese, Frank Kern, Brendon Burchard, Jeff Walker, Bob Bly and Dan Kennedy, among others. Find the leaders in your field and subscribe to their feeds.

By the way, the easiest way to subscribe to these feeds is to use a “reader” like Google Reader. Most readers are free and provide a great way to follow the latest posts all in one place. When you log on, they provide a list of all the posts published by those you’re following, just like a newspaper. You can then scroll through and see what everybody’s blogging about.

It’s also worth mentioning that most of these readers let you search for feeds using keywords or a person’s name and then sort the results by the number of subscribers. Although the internet is full of hidden treasures, it’s a pretty safe bet that the gurus in your field already have large followings, making them easy to find.

Once you’ve identified your industry leaders and subscribed to their feeds using a reader, I recommend checking the latest posts every time you write a post yourself. Get in the habit. By doing so, your awareness skyrockets and you will almost always have other blogs you can link to in your post.

This is such a simple strategy, but you’d be amazed how few people take advantage of it. I’m guilty of it myself. Sometimes, I just don’t feel like I have the time but I’m always sorry when I skip the step.

I describe the people I follow as “thought leaders.” They’re usually on the cutting edge of my field: modern entrepreneurship and online marketing. They know what’s hot in the market. And reading their posts allows me to stay up-to-date on the latest strategies and add my own contribution to the discussion.

If your posts address the hottest topics in your field, you’ll be perfectly positioned to capture some of the browsers searching for those keywords on search engines. And if your posts link out to other leaders in your field, your audience will start to grow. Finally, if some of those “thought leaders” start linking back to you, your exposure (and PageRank) could explode quickly.

Surround yourself with leaders. Surround yourself with top quality content. It improves all aspects of your game and your audience benefits as well.

Author Bio: Patrick is the author of \”Marketing Shortcuts for the Self-Employed\” (2011, Wiley) and a regular speaker for Bloomberg TV. Watch his video about subscribing to top bloggers on YouTube.

Category: Business
Keywords: patrick,schwerdtfeger,subscribe,top,bloggers