Some Tips for Growing Your Wargaming Blog

Old School here with a little advice for those who are starting out in the blogosphere and are looking for a way to grow their blog and get noticed by more of their fellow hobbyists. I was inspired by an article I found at Combined Arms and hopefully this advice can help some folks out there who have a lot to say, but maybe just need a little help getting an audience.
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So here are some tips based on my experience in the last 1 year and 9 months of my Blogging career:
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1. Post Great Articles or Photos and do it regularly:
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This is the number one peice of advice. Decide how often you want to post, whether it be daily weekly, semi-weekly ect and plan out what you want to post (unless you are a dynamo of great postage). This will help you establish habits and momentum, soon you will adapt and blogging at your pace will be second nature. Now, with that in mind, your articles have to have purpose; they need to show us a mini that looks great (eyecandy), help us get better at something (hobby tutorials, tacticas, tips), reviews of items you bought that others might be curious about and finally Battle reports (if you play, show us how you roll) - just imagine what you like about other blogs and adapt it to what you have going on!

-sub tip on this: a lot of blogs have a blogroll, which is a lot like looking at the top fold of a newspaper in that the viewer can see a photo and a paragraph from many blogs. Readers will choose a blog with a great photo and a killer first paragraph (lead) before they grab a mediocre lead with no photo, so I have a rule that I will always put a photo up, even if it is web art.
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2. Get networked: Get on the top blogrolls by joining one or all of the Wargaming Blog networks in our little community. Getting on blogrolls in huge networks gets you massive exposure and will draw wargamers to your blog.
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Bell of Lost Souls is an easy choice as it is usually the first major blog folks view, being on their blogroll gives you a lot of exposure (about 19% of my traffic originates from BoLS).
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From the Warp is a great group to join and Ron is a dedicated Hobbyist who regularly asks the community for contributions. Great contributions get posted on his blog and result in huge traffic for your blog (I get huge spikes in visitors and typically more followers whenever I appear on the Top 10 or on a roll of collaboritive posts). Remember that some networks have rules for blogger behavour and Ron does not appreciate foul language and innapropriate content in his supported blogs, so if you plan on getting dirty, take your blog to a network that welcomes it.
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International House of Paincakes is another network and is growing fast. The blogs networked there are not held to the same moral standards as those on the FTW network, but use your head when posting in any blog network (quality posts shouldn't need too much pirate vocabulary and boobie photos lol). I really like this community for the fact that many of the blogs on their roll have superior tactical content.
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Heresy Online recently started a blog network as well. They are growing slowly and seem to hobble along on content, but welcome good article and can be an easy outlet for exposure.
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3. Interact with other bloggers you really like: I don't mean comment on every blog out there with "Great article". I mean find other blogs that interest you and start commenting constructively and adding to the conversation they are trying to have with the community. People will start to notice you and if you also follow the blogs you comment on, you will likey get followed by them and if they really like your blog as well, add you to their blogroll and comment regularly to you - real interaction is what this community is all about!
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While we are talking about interaction being the key, get your readers involved, ask them questions, let them know their opinion matters and respond to great comments on your blog. Nothing is worse than a ghost blogger who never comments with the people commenting on his stuff!
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4. Be a giver, make a Blogroll: You want to be on other peoples' blogrolls for exposure right? Well, give a little back and link to the blogs you really like too, whether it be through a blogroll or a top 10 or any other way to help out your fellow wargaming bloggers - it comes back just like Karma!
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5. Finally, remember that it isn't all about having a ton of followers: It really isn't. I hosted a contest to boost my follower numbers and I got a ton ... but the folks who keep commenting and interacting regularly are mostly the people who have been followers for a while and who have blogs I regularly comment on and people I interact with who seem like real people to me. I know it can be frustrating when you have a low base of followers, but it's all about having quality people around. That's something that took me a while to realize.
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While we are talking about quality people, look around the FLGS. There are people there with talent and skills and voices of their own who may have no interest in starting a blog, but who would gladly add their effort to a team. There is strength in numbers and I am very happy to have some good friends as a part of team DFG. Their ideas and contributions motivate me and have changed the direction of this blog for the better. So give your fellow gamers a chance!
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One last peice of advice is tracking. I don't put this is the numbered advice because it can become an unhealthy obsession; tracking. You can use sites like Google Analytics to track the traffic on your blog. You can see where in the world people are accessing your blog, how often they do, what articles they view the most and use that data to figure out what works and what doesn't. Take this with a grain of salt, because tracking your blog with a business mentality can suck the fun out of it for you, so check the numbers, but just be yourself.
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Well that's all the advice I have for tonight - another great tip is don't make giant posts full of text (oops). I know a lot of this seems really obvious, but I wish somebody would have laid this out for me a year and a half ago, so I hope it helps. If you have any great tips I may have left out, comment here and let us all know about it!