Yesterday, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post about how to spam comments. Today, I offer positive suggestions for using blog comments to promote yourself and your website.
What is your blog commenting strategy?
- Create visibility with potential customers.
- Meet and build relationships with others.
- Establish your authority in your niche.
- Build back links to your website from relevant sites.
Your blog commenting strategy has the potential to connect you and your website with the powerful people and future clients that will take your business to the next level. Use this potential wisely though, or you risk leaving a permanent trail of blunders for all to see.
Keep these tips in mind as you visit and comment on blogs:
1. Read the post. Too often it is obvious a commenter did not bother to read the post in full. This will either make you look bad or get your comments deleted. What potential customer is going to hire the guy who jumps to conclusions without having all the facts? What blogger can be blamed for feeling insulted when your blog commenting shows you did not read the post?
2. Read the comments. We have all done it. While reading the post, we think of a reply and scroll down to comment. Make sure to read through all the comments before you hit send. Maybe you wrote a brilliant reaction to the blogger’s obvious error, but you will be the one with egg on her face if you skipped right over the comment conversation that clarified and/or apologized for the error.
3. Remember less is more. Visiting a lot of sites when you cannot truly engage with them is a strategy that will work against you. If you are trying to build credibility in your niche, you need to be attentive to the relationships you are building and the comments attached to your name. Take the time to focus on a quality instead of quantity blog commenting strategy.
4. Pass when appropriate. Not every post will merit a comment. If the blogger did not end with a question or you have nothing to add to the conversation, move on. Alternatively, if you get to the end of the post and see 100 people have already commented, you may want to skip adding your two cents. Maybe there is a lot going on there, but you will probably find yourself wading through dozens of repetitive observations only to find at the end you have nothing new to add. Save your blog commenting efforts for the situations where you can enter the conversation early.
5. Keep your comments brief. Sometimes a post will inspire you to write a 500 word response. Better to leave a short, thoughtful comment and take those 500 words back to your own site. If you have a valuable, though lengthy contribution to make to someone’s blog, consider submitting a guest post. Any link back to your website in the body of a blog post will weigh more with the search engines than a comment link.
6. Let the blogger be an expert. You may be tempted to sweep in and undermine the blogger while establishing your own authority. This will not foster good feelings and may send your comment straight to the trash heap. If you have something of value to add that contradicts the blogger, try to present it in a way that allows the blogger to save face. Maybe you could ask a question that allows the blogger to add the information.
7. Visit blogs you like. Who knows why two people will rub each other the wrong way, but it happens. When you find someone with whom you disagree, or who seems to mistrust your motives, just get out of there. Unsubscribe from the blog and delete the bookmark. Remember every blogger has friends and you will do better to shout from your own pulpit than try to knock others off theirs.
8. Link out with care. Some bloggers will consider it spam if you add links within your comments. If you are not sure how the blogger will feel, ask. Only add links if you feel they truly add to the conversation and rarely link to a site you own. Remember, everyone gives more credibility to the third party recommendation.
9. Get to know the others you meet while blog commenting. After awhile, you will see some of the same names popping up on the sites you visit. Visit their sites and develop the conversation further. These are your friends of a friend.
10. Never let the time you spend on blog commenting overwhelm the time you spend making your business great. ‘Nuff said?
Took me time to read the whole article, the article is great but the comments bring more brainstorm ideas, thanks.
- Johnson