One of the first things you’ll discover after starting a blog on any subject is that it can be one huge pain to try and get any traffic.  Traffic brings readers.  At the moment, there are 117 of you that subscribe to this site.  Thanks.  But like anyone else, I’d like to have more.  So, how do I bring more traffic and more readers to this site?  Well, there are many ways, but I thought I’d point out a new one that I just found.

It’s called “If I Can Help a Reporter Out“.  It’s created by Peter Shankman and it’s premise is pretty simple.  Each day, Shankman gets querys for a source from many reporters.  Rather than sift through a huge list of contacts that are probably not related to find the one or two that are, he decided it would be easier to have the source find the reporter.  So, he takes the query and appends it to the list.  Then he sends out a few updates to the list a day.  As a “source” I/we look through and find the querys that we can lend some expert help to and reply to the reporter.  Pretty simple really.

And, if the reporter decides to use you as the “expert”, there is a very real possibility that not only will you get a mention, but that you’ll also get a URL in the article.  I shouldn’t have to tell you what a link from even a small town newspaper could do for your traffic.  Or your readership.

I just signed up, so as of writing this, I haven’t even received the first list of the queries.  I’ll try and remember to come back and update this post when I do.

UPDATE: I’ve received the first list and it’s really quite nice.  A quick list of the queries sorted by topic followed by the details below.   About 30 ish queries.