Blogging is gaining huge traction with entrepreneurs and small businesses. These folks have realized that the "blogosphere" presents a unique opportunity to reach a global audience with little to no cost.

The key to selling with a blog is to give great value to your readers in the form of free information. Blogs build your authority as an expert in your industry and create a relationship with readers that creates a perfect buying environment. But with all the noise out there, you need to be strategic about ways to gain an audience in the first place.

The great thing about blogs is the links that you can get from other bloggers, which bring you traffic. Plus, these links help you rank better in search engines like Google. To get links from other bloggers, you need to say or create something that is worthy of attention.

In other words, youre looking for publicity, just like you might offline with the mainstream media. But online, a little bit of attention from bloggers often leads to even more attention from even more bloggers, which creates the possibility that something you write could spread virally all over the Internet.

Here are five strategies for creating content that gets attention:

1. Hold a Contest. Come up with a competition relevant to your industry or business niche. Promote it to other relevant bloggers and get them involved. Or, you could create a form of sweepstakes, but make sure to consult an attorney in this case, as sweepstakes are highly regulated.

2. Create a Tutorial or Free Ebook. The Internet is built on information. Create a useful guide based on your expertise and people will take notice. Youll gain publicity, new prospects and hopefully sales from just one effort.

3. Give an Award or Hold an Event. Create an award for the best blogger or website in your niche, or try creating an industry awareness event that you orchestrate. The most valuable traffic you can get is from related, but perhaps non-competitive businesses in your own industry, and any industry loves to buzz about whos the best or whats going on.

4. Give to Charity. Combine a fundraising or paid online event with a pledge to donate all proceeds to charity. Youll be doing a good deed and be perceived as a good citizen, and you might also get loads of free publicity as well.

5. Be Controversial. A good controversy almost always gains attention. Do or say something that goes against the grain of your industry or niche. Be careful not to go too far, but its much worse to simply play it safe and have no audience at all.

These are just a few ways to gain attention online with your blog. The key is to think about what has value to your desired audience (as opposed to just you), and then find a creative way to present it.