Behind every project, there is passion, and for every passion, there are bloggers. What you want to do is turn these bloggers into fans of your project.
Finding passionate bloggers
You don’t need to spend thousands of hours searching the web for bloggers in your niche. Google comes to the rescue with its Blog Search feature. Enter a keyword related to your project, and Google returns specific blog posts in which the keyword appears.
At the bottom of the left column, you’ll see links for Atom and RSS feeds. Click one and enter the address into your RSS feed reader. Repeat the process for as many keywords as you need. Then you can review the blog posts in your reader when it’s convenient for you. Very efficient.
Letting them know about your project
When you’re skimming through your list of blog posts in your reader, it will be clear that some of the authors are just the kind of people you want to tell about your project. Go to their blogs and actually do some reading to learn about them. Find a post or posts on which you can leave a comment that really contributes to the conversation. If it’s appropriate, provide a link to your project website. Absolutely, under no circumstances, should you just put a self-promoting link in the comment. This is bad manners, it’s spammy, and it’s more likely to alienate the blog authors than to intrigue them.
At this point, subscribe to the individual blogs on which you’ve left comments. Go back from time to time to participate in the conversation (without promoting your project in every comment). At a certain point, it should come naturally to engage the blogger in a one-on-one conversation. If the authors are truly members of your niche, you should be able to ask them for advice, or share something that might be useful or interesting to them.
The key ingredient
Sincerity is the key ingredient. Because these bloggers share your passion, it should be easy and natural for you to build real relationships with them. Once a genuine bond has been formed between you, these bloggers could very well become evangelists for your project. So hone your people skills and go make some friends.