Blog Promotion - Commenting
Blog commenting is important sure, but I’m not sure that every blogger realizes quite how important. The main reason why I value blog commenting so highly is the QUALITY of traffic that it can drive. A blog comment won’t drive the traffic levels of social networking sites, but it’s a lot easier to do and will bring you far more worthwhile traffic. Below is an example of what arose from me spending 10 seconds commenting on a fellow blogger’s blog:
“Thanks, Tom! Really nice website you’ve got there. I’ve subscribed!”
Notice the difference from your average 5 second social networking visitor? I’m connecting with a fellow blogger in a personal one on one way, and they are doing the same to me. How many 5 second visitors will bother returning or subscribing to your blog?
In my eyes commenting produces not only great traffic, but in fact the absolute best quality of traffic. More often than not it will be the blogger who’s blog your are commenting who will return the gesture and come and check out your blog. Bloggers as a rule are less fickle than the average internet user, and so will be the people to stick around, learn a little about you and leave you a comment.
Now, the problem soon arises of time management. It can be very time consuming searching endless blogs to read/comment upon and often bloggers get stuck in a rut of commenting on a very small number of blogs that they are familiar with (I’m guilty of this myself). However, a great idea hit me the other day… I figured that why not utilize the power of RSS to boost your commenting productivity? If you begin to view commenting as a form of marketing rather than simply ‘chatting’ with fellow bloggers you will become more efficient at doing it.
The basic idea is to get a feed reader, and then start subscribing to EVERY SINGLE good blog that you come across that is relevant to your audience. No more subscribing solely to your friends blogs, I’m talking EVERY worthwhile blog you come across. Then, devote a set amount of time each day going through the new posts for ALL these blogs and leave a comment on each one. This task will start relatively small, but will grow as you subscribe to more and more blogs. This should effectively cut out all the worthless time you spend surfing idly around the blogosphere. You’ll become a commenting machine, systematically going through your list of new posts every single day.
Of course I’m not encouraging you to use this idea to spam people. This is absolutely wrong. Don’t even say something ‘friendly’ like “Hey nice blog! Check out mine”, or “I have a similar contest check it out”. You want to be leaving the BEST QUALITY comments that you possibly can. Try to build on the original posts, or give constructive feedback as to what you thought was good/bad about their article. Don’t be afraid to disagree with other blogs, as long as you are polite and constructive they’ll probably appreciate the feedback.
The thing is, once you get into a systematic and practiced routine you’ll be surprised at how little time it consumes. Most wasted time occurs in the time between reading posts, that is to say just surfing around/between various websites. By going DIRECT to each post, with the view to leaving a comment you’ll be able to quick pick up on the key points of the article and leave constructive feedback. If you increase you subscriptions by say 10 blogs per day, you’ll soon be leaving hundreds of quality comments on a variety of blogs relevant to yours, and DRAMATICALLY increasing your exposure in the blogging community. You’ll also be making a name for yourself as someone who knows what they’re talking about - an expert in your field.
Please let me know what you think of this idea, and if you choose to use it how it works out for you. I’ll post the results for Push Standards soon hopefully.
Be careful with comments like that — several “spammer” sites have been going around leaving comments on blogs with that exact wording. They’re hoping to find blogs that have enabled “do_follow” in the comments so they know where they can get links back to their sites.
That said, I agree: commenting at other blogs is a very important part of networking. I try to make a point of visiting 10-15 new-to-me blogs daily (like yours!) because it’s a great way to find inspiration and make contacts.
I think you need have quality comments otherwise you are just spamming them for your own ends. Trackbacks (where supported) might be worthwhile too, I don’t make much use of them but they’re great if you want to talk about another blog post in a bit more depth.
I agree with you that quality comments are bringing quality traffic, and I like this personal style of approaching people, rather than just “hunt” for traffic. The numbers you talk about, though, seem to high for me . 10 new blogs each day added to my feed reader…It’s doable, like the 7 day challenge, but far too time consuming for me. Let us know how it’ll work out for you!
Kate: Yeah I’m in no way suggesting leaving identical or even similar comments. Comments should be relevant to the post and of the highest quality. I’m merely suggesting doing it in a more focused, systematic way to work more efficiently.
Matt: Yeah I hadn’t considered trackbacks, they can work well.
Anca: I agree that it can take up a fair amount of time, but if you think of how long you currently spend commenting on blogs I’m sure that you could get at least 3 times the amount of commenting done working systematically through a list of blogs.
Yeah, you’re right. Actually, I have to get a little bit more organized. Once I make a plan and stick to it, I’m sure I’ll improve on my commenting skills. Thanks for the advice!
I think blog commenting is very important as it provides a chance for every one to give their views. Blog commenting is important for sure,commenting produces not only great traffic, but in fact the absolute best quality of traffic.
My point exactly, I can’t honestly think of a better QUALITY of traffic than you get from commenting.