Bloggers love comments. Commenting in the blogosphere is always welcome by every bloggers or anyone who has a blog. Commenting is a way of encourages conversation and interaction. It is the most efficient, easiest and simplest way of building relationship between two individuals. Commenting is also a way of marketing. You can make use of comments to drive traffic to your blog and increase your readership.
However are you making good use of it or are you guilty of abusing the use of it? To write a few words in the comment box is a simple thing to do but do you always give valuable comments in other blogs that you visit? Probably just to share about my experience, i have two blogs. One is FindMyblogWay as you see here, the other one is FMstory, a blog that record my venture with my favorite game Football Manager 2010.
Commenting is the one that i use to promote my FM blog during the start-up. There are two establish FM blogs before me, one being truefootballmanager and the other being footballmanagerstory. Before i start the blog, i am already an active commentator in the blogs so relationship was built up long before and once i give a comment that i am starting a blog. Everything seems very smooth as immediately i got readers visiting my site. I believe one of the reason is that most of the loyal readers keep track of things happening and most important of all is every readers have the same passion about Football Manager.
I did a mistake here in Findmyblogway, i started giving comments after my blog is up and running. This is not a ideal way to start building relationship although relationship still can be build in long term. I gave comments in dailyblogtips, a blog that i followed long before i started this blog and a few of the others. I have the thinking that commenting in a A-list blogs will drive me a lot of traffic but how wrong am I. To drive a traffic through comments is not as easy as you think especially if you are just putting “Great post Thanks” in the comment box. There are a few things that i learnt about commenting and i would like to share with you.
- Give your comments only if you have something to say
If you do not understand the topic or have nothing valuable to say, save your comments. Give it a miss as nobody will take note of you if you cannot contribute to the topic. You won’t want your comments to be treated as spam if you are just posting one line of comments.
- Comment ahead before you start a blog
Before you take action to start a blog, give yourself sometime to start commenting on other blogs that have the same niche as you. Try to give valuable comments and not just introducing yourself as Tom or Dick. Once the blog owner establish a relationship with you, i believe he will help to promote your site when you start building your blog.
- Avoid the A-lists blogs
I never say that you can’t comment in those A-list blogs, you can if you think you have a different opinion or something valuable too add. If your intention is to drive traffic or catch attention, save it please. Just imagine how many comments are there in those A-list blogs? They are probably numb about the comments they receive everyday and if they have to reply everyone, it is almost impossible to do that. And up to their achievements, they don’t have to reply to comments to build up relationship as most will be in their mail list.
- Use your own name
I believe you have heard about this in other blogs, try to use your own name while commenting. Do not use your blog name as you need to be known as who you are and not your blog. Do not give the impression of just interested of snatching the traffic of other blogs but you are there to provide value and building relationship.
- Stop commenting in every blog
I know you want to be known in the blogosphere. But your comments don’t have to appear in every blog. Your name or worse still your blog name is appearing in A-Z blogs. Please stop doing that. Write your comments in those blogs that you follow is what you should do or interact with those who reads your blog and have a blog themselves. You can input some of those commenting time to focus on writing great contents in your blog instead of dropping comments everywhere.
I put my hands up and admit that i am guilty of the some of the commenting behavior that i listed above. I decided that this is not the way to be done. For now this are the things that i intend to do about commenting :
- Give comments only if i have something to say
- Networking with fellow bloggers such as Michael, Oni, Knut and Samuel. I hope we can grow our blog together bros.
- I won’t be commenting in every blogs that i visit unless i have something to add.
Share your thoughts
How is your commenting style like? Are you guilty of abusing the use of the commenting feature? Please kindly share it with us in the comment box.
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Nice post man! umm… the idea of not commenting everywhere is not bad! most bloggers do use it to build name(Brand), i don’t think it’s a bad idea if the person have something reasonable to say. thanks bro! keep the good work up.
Hi Samuel,
Thanks for the comments. I am just not in favor of giving a lame comment for the sake of doing it. i agree with you if the person is able to add value to the post, then he should go ahead and comment in every blog. But how difficult that will be!
Lye
Hi Lye
You have definitely given me something to ponder here. I am an advocate of commenting on as many blogs as you can -
1. It helps build your brand
2. It helps build community and friendships
3. It helps promote your blog
4. It helps you become a better blogger
That said I agree that we shouldn’t just comment for the sake of it. A comment that says “hey great post”, does not help, whereas a comment that sparks a conversation and adds depth and meaning with the blogger and fellow commentators helps in so many ways, let alone to that which I have already mentioned.
I’m honoured you have mentioned me in this post, bro. And I hope we call all grow our blogs together as well.
Cheers
Michael
Michael recently posted..Is Your Blog Congruent
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the support Bro. Thats precisely the idea, do not comment for the sake of it. i fully agree about the benefits that commenting brings and i believe you are commenting to add value to the post in every blogs that you commented. So i don’t think you should change your commenting style because of this post. In fact my purpose is to encourage valuable and genuine comments and that will benefit everyone.
Talk to you soon.
Lye
Really great post Lye,
Exactly! You are absolutely right.
You really give some great tips about building a blog through blog commenting. It is always very important not to comment just for the sake of it but rather comment when you have something good to say.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Onibalusi Bamidele recently posted..21 Ways to Get More Subscribers to Your Blog
Hi Oni,
Thanks for the kind words. To provide valuable comment is an art. It doesn’t seem so easy as we think. However if we can make full use of it then the benefits will be enormous.
Talk to you soon.
Lye
I think the trick is to comment every time you read a blog post. It means that you can get yourself and your blog out and recognized. The big mistake that people make is they comment for the sake of it without reading whats said. Awesome post, keep up the work.
Hi Peter,
Thanks for commenting and you are absolutely right about that. There are some who simply comment without reading the post.
Thanks for visit and talk to you soon.
Lye
To start with, I am guilty of not commenting ahead before I started my blog.
About the A-list blogs, I don’t comment much…I don’t know why, but just simply don’t comment.
I would also like to add that apart from commenting with the real name, using a real or recognizable picture (like yours) as a gravatar is also important.
Sourav recently posted..Improve Your Blog Even When Offline
Hi Sourav,
I am also guilty of the first two points that you mentioned when i started this blog. I agree with the last point. Having a gravatar let the others know who you are and it helps in building relationship.
Talk to you soon.
Lye
I see the usual suspects are here
very cool!
Very intuitive Lye. Not sure if I agree 100% with “Comment ahead before you start a blog” but then again I didn’t start my blog this way so don’t have anything to compare it to.
As a blog owner, I always want to find out more about my commentators and if they have a link I will click on it regardless if they’ve built a relationship with me or not…just what I do, may not apply to everyone else.
Although I do agree that with very busy blogs that get sometimes hundreds of comments, it would rest more on the quality of the comment to stand out from the crowd and take notice.
Would be an interesting test for sure.
Thanks for the great post!
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Hi Michele,
It’s great that you have different opinions regarding “comment ahead before starting a blog”.
Its quite common for me too to take good note of my commentators as they are one of the motivation factors for me to run a blog.
Thanks for taking your time to drop by and posting your comments. I really appreciate that.
i find nothing wrong
in commenting in every blog
that you stumble upon
provided that you sincerely mean what you say.
that’s for me.
but there are those whose goal
is to drive traffic to their site
and i can’t say it’s not right.
the guy could be a seller
but you, as the prospect,
has all the means to turn him down.
you can shoo him away
you can delete his comments
or build a new blog site
and disguise yourself.
as for the one liner comments
what’s wrong with it?
even one word will do
i bet when you have no reader yet
you could have worship the first soul
who have commented
uh hu?
for all that have been said
i actually just want to say
‘Hi are you ok?’
but upon reading your great entry, really
i opted to say so much.
hope it’s long enough.
by the way, are you ok?
Twitter: Findmyblogway
Hi bendedspoon,
Sure there’s nothing wrong in commenting in every blog but the comments must be value added and must be of some substance not just one word or two. Think that’s my point.
Thanks for visiting and the comments. Talk soon.
Both bloggers and readers comment for different reasons but the purpose is the same and that is to exchange ideas and share opinions. Newbies specially who want to increase traffic to their blog but wants to do it carefully should read such posts which may prevent them from making any possible wrong moves.
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