101 Traffic Tips | #11 | Commenting

Commenting is a sure fire way to attract others to your blog. It is one of the best opportunities to both network and offer value to others on other sites as well as sharing and adding value to the conversation. There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to commenting on other blogs other than these two. 1. If you are not adding any value to the comment don’t comment. It needs to be more than a simple, “Yea that’s great.”. You need to explain what is great and why. Ideally you would ask a question. This will elicit responses by other commenters and the original blog author. 2. While language has unfortunately evolved to where profanity is mainstream, it doesn’t or shouldn’t be on your blog. My rule of thumb is your comments should be able to be read by your 11 year old daughter.

So here are some general best practices to follow when commenting. They are in no particular order of importance.
Bloggers firstly love when others comment on their articles. They are an acknowledgment of the work that the authors put into their posts. They love to hear their own name. They like when you convey to them and to everyone else that their content is both relevant and important.

• While comments tend to be a response for the author, they can also address both the author and those who read the comments. Additionally, they can be in response directly to another commenter. If this is the case, make sure that it is easy to distinguish between the two. I like to use the persons name to make be clear. In come cases with long running comments I like to do this:
  [Bill said] I don’t agree with that method ….
  [I say] Bill, have you considered that …
• If done properly, it is OK to disagree with the author. “Properly” is the key word here. What works well in these situations is that more than likely the topic is important and relevant and the author does have some things that you agree with. Say these first, then craft your disagreement as an opinion. Reinforce those opinions and you actually may be able to sway the author to change their mind. Use real life examples if possible. This will lend creditably and authority in the eyes of the author and to those others that read this specific comment.
• Most bloggers, including myself, will go the blog of the commenter to find out more about that person. I want to find out more about that person and see what makes them tic and what motivates them. I want to see what they are writing about.
  Remember this, most bloggers (like myself) read the blogs of those who comment on their posts. I want to know more about the person. I want to see who they are, what motivates them, what are they writing?
• Many times I’ve found that someone else has evoked a thought provoking response out of me and have literally created content on their post and came back and created a post on my blog. They usually go something like this: “I was over on Billy Bob’s blog and he had a post on XYZ. It was a great post and I commented on it. The post and comment are very important so I’d like to share it here as well.” So you see, I’m linking back to the original post, including my comments in a quote, and we are both mutually helping each other out.
• You can add a signature line to your comment. Not everyone uses comment love. You want to provide a link back to your blog. Here’s what I’m going to start using.

  Chris Kilber
  www.ChrisKilber.com
  Home of the Daily 101 FREE Traffic Generating Strategies

  Make sure you hyperlink out to your blog and use the target=”_blank” as well.

• Creating a relationship with other blogs readers in blogs that you frequent gives both their blog and your blog credibility. If your comments are meaningful, relevant, and real life comments they will show you care about the topics you comment on and are not for the purpose of selfish aims.
• If you comment on a blog that does not garnish a lot of traffic, you aren’t going to get a lot from them. This is not to say you shouldn’t comment on new blogs. Even when you think you are getting a lot of traffic there is always going to be blogs having multiple times your traffic. What goes around comes around and if you’re high-browing lowly blogs, just remember how you started one day. I’ll leave it at that.
• I always like to keep the conversation going on comments so I always like to ask questions. I think people like to be respected for their viewpoints and what better way than to ask them for some more information. It works tremendously.

There you have it, my commenting philosophy. Like I mentioned in the beginning, there is no right or wrong when it comes to commenting, but I think using these ideas and strategies will help you engage your readers.

Thank You So Much Everyone!