There has been quite a commenting revolution happening on blogs lately.
Everyone is promoting it as the best way to quickly grow you blog, but a lot of them are going about it the wrong way. Let’s take a closer look at some of the reason people leave comments on blogs and try and find the ones that will be the most beneficial.
Why People Leave Comments
For Back Links
This has become extremely popular of late with the introduction of the ‘do-follow revolution’ where bloggers started removing the ‘no-follow’ tags from their comments, allowing the search engines to share the link juice of that page with the commentators.
The only problem is that this has cause a dramatic increase in blog comment spam, and not all of it is automated bot spam. A lot of bloggers see a do-follow blog and leave simple, ‘nothing’ comments that do not add any value to the blog posts and are really just there to get a link back to the blog – I see this as another version of spam.
For Traffic
Before the ‘do-follow revolution’ started, the majority of bloggers were not commenting for backlinks. Instead the figured that if they could even get a small percentage of the the traffic that the bigger blogs they were commenting on received, they could maybe pick up an extra subscriber or two to their blog.
This is where the fascination with being the first commentator on a new blog post started – because every commentator after that would first see this first comment (and hopefully click through to your blog).
For Branding
With the amount of blogs currently online, it is getting harder and harder to be seen or heard. This is why a lot of bloggers actually just use commenting for branding their blogs and getting their logo and name in front of as many people as possible.They do this by having their logo as their display picture, and include the blog’s name in their name.
There is not a problem with doing this, but some bloggers do prefer it if your profile picture is actually a picture of you, and if you are going to use your blog’s name, at least include yours as well. (Tom | Build That List – for example) This way people know who they are talking to.
For Networking
In a recent guest post I talked about what makes a good network. Networking, if done correctly will not only increase your visitors and exposure, but it will increase you. The power of a network is the ability to learn off each other and network with each other – and a lot of bloggers use comments as a way to try and start these networking relationships (and to foster them).
To Add Value
I left this one to last as I believe it is not only the most important, but also the most forgotten.
The whole concept of leaving a comment was created so that we could leave our thoughts on the post.As I mentioned earlier, there is starting to be a lot more spammers that are actually just regular bloggers. They are not spammers because they have dodgy links in their comments, instead they are spammers because they do not add to the discussion of the post.
If you comment is not related, contact the blogger through their contact page. To write about something unrelated to the the post is most likely just a selfish grab for attention.
While none of the first four reasons are necessarily wrong, unless they add value, I would rethink my strategy.
While you will most likely get quite a few comments though, that add absolutely no value at all, I would dare say that you would get limited traffic (even if you get the first comment), you will be doing your brand harm, and you will have little chance of building a strong network with your fellow bloggers.
So why do you comment?
There has been quite a commenting revolution happening on blogs lately.
Everyone is promoting it as the best way to quickly grow you blog, but a lot of them are going about it the wrong way. Let’s take a closer look at some of the reason people leave comments on blogs and try and find the ones that will be the most beneficial.
Why People Leave Comments
1- For Back Links
This has become extremely popular of late with the introduction of the ‘do-follow revolution’ where bloggers started removing the ‘no-follow’ tags from their comments, allowing the search engines to share the link juice of that page with the commentators.
The only problem is that this has cause a dramatic increase in blog comment spam, and not all of it is automated bot spam. A lot of bloggers see a do-follow blog and leave simple, ‘nothing’ comments that do not add any value to the blog posts and are really just there to get a link back to the blog – I see this as another version of spam.
2- For Traffic
Before the ‘do-follow revolution’ started, the majority of bloggers were not commenting for backlinks. Instead the figured that if they could even get a small percentage of the the traffic that the bigger blogs they were commenting on received, they could maybe pick up an extra subscriber or two to their blog.
This is where the fascination with being the first commentator on a new blog post started – because every commentator after that would first see this first comment (and hopefully click through to your blog).
3- For Branding
With the amount of blogs currently online, it is getting harder and harder to be seen or heard. This is why a lot of bloggers actually just use commenting for branding their blogs and getting their logo and name in front of as many people as possible.They do this by having their logo as their display picture, and include the blog’s name in their name.
There is not a problem with doing this, but some bloggers do prefer it if your profile picture is actually a picture of you, and if you are going to use your blog’s name, at least include yours as well. (Tom | Build That List – for example) This way people know who they are talking to.
4- For Networking
In a recent guest post I talked about what makes a good network. Networking, if done correctly will not only increase your visitors and exposure, but it will increase you. The power of a network is the ability to learn off each other and network with each other – and a lot of bloggers use comments as a way to try and start these networking relationships (and to foster them).
5- To Add Value
I left this one to last as I believe it is not only the most important, but also the most forgotten.
The whole concept of leaving a comment was created so that we could leave our thoughts on the post.As I mentioned earlier, there is starting to be a lot more spammers that are actually just regular bloggers. They are not spammers because they have dodgy links in their comments, instead they are spammers because they do not add to the discussion of the post.
If you comment is not related, contact the blogger through their contact page. To write about something unrelated to the the post is most likely just a selfish grab for attention.
While none of the first four reasons are necessarily wrong, unless they add value, I would rethink my strategy.
While you will most likely get quite a few comments though, that add absolutely no value at all, I would dare say that you would get limited traffic (even if you get the first comment), you will be doing your brand harm, and you will have little chance of building a strong network with your fellow bloggers.
So why do you comment?
