If you've built a blog, your primary focus should be in developing a solid readership. Now that you have your blog running, you've been adding quality content, and you've been engaging your readers, what do you do now?

You need to spend more time promoting your blog. When you market your blog, you're marketing yourself. You can't hide behind a faceless company which makes marketing so much more collaborative and difficult at the same time.

Think of these six methods as a way of reaching out to your audiences and saying, "This is who I am. Come on over and let's chat."

Tip #1 - Technorati Your Blog

Having your blog "claimed" at Technorati offers you several advantages. This includes the opportunity to add your branding or photograph to Technorati, where it becomes visible to millions of viewers who visit this popular site daily. You can also see your Technorati link and get updated link counts.

Tip #2 - Ping Your Blog

A few sites, including Weblogs, ZingFast, and Yahoo's blo.gs offer pinging services. When you sign up for a pinging service, these sites send out a "ping" to inform other pinging sites every time your blog is updated. Viewers who happen to be visiting any other site with pinging services will see your "newly updated blog" flash across their screens.

Tip #3 - Bookmark your Blog

Create profiles at one or several social bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us. Adding links to your blog as well as excerpts from your blog to your del.icio.us profile increases your visibility among the site's readership. Interested traffic will click on your link and, hopefully, visit your site.

Tip #4 - FeedBurner your Blog

FeedBurner, which is an RSS service, helps you promote your blog's content along with building and measuring your audience. Both of these metrics are essential to your blog marketing strategy.

Tip #5 - Keyword your Blog

Think of your blog as a regular web page and include keywords into your blog postings. The best way to make sure you're including the right keywords is to focus on a topic you're interested in to begin with. If you're trying to promote a topic which doesn't interest you, you're more than likely to end up sounding stiff. Make sure the keywords are relevant to your blog — you want quality traffic that sticks not just traffic that comes through.

Tip #6 - Link your Blog

You should link to relevant blogs and sites that are similar to your blog. But, don't expect others to link back to you. The only way to get links is to be "linkable". You have to become a valuable resource on your topic. Once you become a resource, you won't have to worry about getting backlinks—they'll come naturally.