1.     Be Real This is the first and foremost principle of advancing your blog karma. Being real involves not falsifying who you are, being transparent about who you are, and what you believe, and, most of all, sharing an honest voice.  Humans trust others that have an authentic voice.

    2.     Respond Yes, tough as it is, when you have a high volume of unsolicited emails someone has taken the time to write directly to you so you should make it enough of a priority to respond.  Obviously, this applies to personally written messages.

     3.     Offer Exclusives Maybe you aren’t breaking “news” on your blog, but the idea of exclusives is not limited to that.  If you are going to write about something interesting, offer a preview of other bloggers.  Share ideas as they happen and offer the chance for others to say it first.  Exclusives are gold in the blog community … EVERYONE wants them.

     4.     Connections The golden rule for making connections is introducing people to one another who later will spread your knowledge and grow your presence. Engage, comment, and see your community grow!

    5.     Join Networks  This is not just about publishing networks, but about social networks of people who are interested in the same things you are.  Joining blogs like this, and actively participating adds value to the group.  As a member, it probably won’t be long before you take something useful from the group.

 

 6.     Avoid Snarkiness Yes, I said it Snarkiness is the enemy of good karma.  Being rude, uselessly opinionated or arrogant are all rising behaviors from the blogger’s community that add to the sea of needless commentary online.  The price for this may not be apparent, as unfortunately, snarkiness does sometimes result in readership (who can’t avoid watching a car crash?) — but eventually the snarkiness will catch up to you.

     7.     Forgive Mistakes Most bloggers are not professional writers and don’t have the time for checking every fact or argument before writing it.  This does result in mistakes, and people do screw up.  Correcting them without holding a grudge is a huge deal.  Mistakes are made, people are sorry.  If they fixed the error, then get over it and move on.

 

  8.     Post To Contact Email is not the only way to get in touch with someone.  Posting about something they have written and linking to their blog offers an indirect route to contact, as most bloggers pay attention to who is linking to them.  Writing about one of my posts is still the best way to get my attention, and I suspect most bloggers are the same way.  Communicating in this way avoids the email filter and starts the dialogue instantly.

 

   9.     Comment and Participate.  This may be part of earlier suggestions, however the idea that you need to be a participant online rather than just an observer is key to this KARMA.  If you expect others to communicate and add comments to your blog, you need to be online doing the same for others.  Without participation, it is difficult to belong to a community online or build relationships with others.

 

   10.       Gratitude Often mentioned as an important factor in connecting with users, showing gratitude for someone participating on your blog, linking to you, or offering some other effort on your behalf is HUGE.  Appreciation makes someone more likely to believe that you think their efforts are significant and as a result, connect more strongly with you and your blog.

 

            It’s All About The Karma, Baby!