Most people still view blog commenting as one of those little ways that can drive some traffic to their blogs. In my posts that I recently published in Comluv, I outlined how those small things can lead to bigger things, like forming business partnership, reaping the rewards and so on. But then with that post I got so many questions on how to really benefit from it especially when just starting out. Lo and behold, I’m now going to write this definitive article on how to drive traffic using blog commenting.
Note: This post mainly targets noobs with blogs that have little to no traffic. However, if you’re an intermediate or an expert one, I can assure you that this post can still be beneficial to you.
Ok so when driving traffic to your blog, it’s usually been starting out from little things moving up to bigger things. You can’t secure those guest posts without being a loyal reader first and so on. So for this article I’m going to outline a step by step guide on how you can start benefiting from commenting on other blogs.
Setting Things Up
This is pretty fundamental but surprisingly most people forget these little things. To get started first and foremost, you need to decide on two things. First is the name you’re going to use and second is the image you’re going to spread using your gravatar.
Most people use the format of “Name – Blog’s name” and it’s fine. However for me, I find it more convenient just to use my first name since I really don’t have any other blogs that I author a lot nor do I go out and comment using those other blogs. The name is important because this is how other people will know you and it’s all part of personal branding. Being inconsistent with it is a bad mistake.
Now for gravatar, just head on to gravatar.com and set your default image. Like in choosing names, it’s extremely important to choose an image that will brand yourself and your blog. It’s either your blog’ s logo or a respectable face of yours. 😉
The goal why we want to set this up as early as we could is because we want to build our brand. We want to be sticky. You see, even in just the first step we’re already trying to establish something outside of the traffic itself. By doing it right, it enables us to enjoy long term benefits that would come later on.
Signing up with ComLuv (mandatory)
Well it’s free, it provides good service, it enables you to be in a good community and it gets you traffic, what’s more to ask? (and they sponsored a big contest as well!)
Getting started is simple, head on to ComLuv and sign up for an account and get their little plugin. What ComLuv does is basically just fetch one of your last blog posts and append it when you make a comment. With that being said, you no longer need to use the name field to target a certain keyword and link back to a specific post for your blog because ComLuv does it all for you.
There’s one trick that I’d like to use with ComLuv. For blogs that I comment on for multiple times, what I usually do is choose different type of posts to append. Most people don’t do this and just get contented with ComLuv showing their last post. If you’re not rotating, you’re leaving a lot on the table. Make sure you maximize the benefits of commenting with ComLuv by choosing different posts to show.
You Gotta love interacting with people
Unfortunately most bloggers do it wrong with the actual commenting part. The thing that you got to understand is you need to have a knack for interacting with other people. Most bloggers don’t do commenting well for the sole reasoning that they don’t enjoy it.
Trying to force doing things that you don’t really enjoy can have a dull effect on whatever you’re doing. So if you don’t feel like doing commenting, you better have to start enjoying it.
100-150 blog comments per day, can you do it?
Now this is more for starting bloggers. A lot of people ask me why I don’t comment on that many blogs anymore. the truth is because I get enough traffic that I can switch from doing the little things to start doing the bigger ones like guest posting, doing joint ventures and so on.
But again back to the question, can you do that? Just like in anything, doing it in bulk is certainly the fastest way to get it done. Now I’m not saying that you should go out and just have a generic comment to place on their comment form. That certainly would do more harm than anything else.
It goes back to the third point which is loving interaction with other people. As you can see, if you enjoy doing commenting (which I hope you do), there’s a good chance that 100 comments per day is very easy for you seriously! I mean isn’t it nice to share your insight with other people and let them realize how brilliant you are? 😉
Again one trick that I used when I was just getting started was finding the right time to do this in a day and then focus commenting on blogs alone. The way I see it with most people is that they do it as part of other things which is not wrong but if you’re just getting very little to no traffic, you may want to give at least an hour or 2 a day, just doing commenting. Meaning, be focused in it. Don’t do other things besides it for that certain period.
I found that the best time of the day to do it is before I go to bed. Back then I spend an hour and a half for 5 days a week every night to go out on blogs and just focus on contributing something through the comment form. Believe me it’s worth it.
Building on Momentum
Now it’s all about building on that momentum. Come on, blog commenting is not your main traffic strategy forever right? This is where we are transitioning from the little things to doing the bigger works.
As long as you start getting that consistency in traffic from those blogs you usually comment on, you can start doing it lesser, maybe 20-50 a day, then after some time 10-20 and so on.
I would also be expecting that in that point, you have somehow established a good standing not just with the owner but also with the community of those blogs. From that on, you can start guest posting for those sites, pitching your ideas to them and just about anything else. And again it started with that little comment, I mean ton loads of informative comments.
Conclusion
Who said commenting involves very little work? Yes it does but depending on where you’re currently at, you may want to exert some effort in it. Before you can move to the top echelon, you gotta start doing the little things first and fast, and blog commenting is one of them.
After all it’s like hitting three birds with one big stone. You start creating buzz about who you are and what your blog is all about, you start building inbound links which later on results to good organic rankings. and more importantly you start that initial connection which later on builds good relationships with them. All in all, direct traffic seems to be just the icing on the cake.
I would very much love to hear your opinion about it as I’m sure you have your own strategy that you may want or currently implementing.
Post note update: Overwhelming response from readers here in FamousBloggers made me realize something. 100-150 comments per day is more suited to newbie bloggers who have very little to no traffic yet. However, there are also other factors to consider when doing commenting and it includes whether you do full-time blogging or part-time blogging.
Obviously if you’re spending less hours in blogging in conjunction with a day job, 100-150 comments is not feasible and I’d suggest to just focus on just 10-20 meaningful comments. Also some of you might have misunderstood my statement of commenting in huge quantities. It is VERY important to provide value to other blogs so at the end its still way better to comment on fewer blogs yet add superb value than jump into 150 blogs without adding anything worth mentioning.
That’s it and I’d like to thank you guys for sharing your meaningful insights. This article has grown and I equally learn a lot from your inputs.
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