Spreading the word about your blog shouldn’t be exclusive to your closest friends or industry peers. Self-promotion can also be sought on numerous review sites that connect users with the products and services they are curious about. Proving readers of those sites with concise reviews or recommendations is not only good writing practice, but will also help you establish your authority on various subjects.

Sites like Amazon.com allow you to set up your own user profile where you can provide a link to your own blog. As visitors come to the site and read your well thought out and useful reviews, they may be curious enough to follow you in hopes of getting more information.

Getting your voice heard on more specific review sites and forums is even better than getting featured on the broader networks, as it is a more direct means of connecting with your blog’s target audience. Whatever your niche, there is sure to be an active forum or website that thrives on user submitted reviews, and the more focused your contributions are, the better.

For example, I syndicate some of posts on my music blog The Rock Blogger by submitting them to the site rateyourmusic.com, where registered users can rate and write reviews for their album collections. Not only do I get increased traffic form people reading my specific reviews, this site gives me an opportunity to research and connect with my audience through its forums. As it stands right now, rateyourmusic is my number one source of referrals, as each review I submit contains a link back to its original source – my blog.

By actively engaging a web community that already exists (and thrives), I am able to leverage some of the co-operative networks on my own blog and effectively draw in the visitors that are more likely to come to my site and stay there. This syndication strategy is essential if you find yourself lacking the type of traffic you really want. To make the direct connection with an audience that already exists, and is currently searching for the type of information you offer, getting yourself on review sites is a winning method.

So now that you have this strategy in mind, search the web for a review site appropriate for your blog’s content. You may want to start with something big like Amazon, but it is a crowded field. Try working your way through specific forums and niche sites to carve out your core readership.

Has anyone out there tried this strategy? How has it worked out for your blog traffic?