Make The Most Of Blog Comments – Part 1

Leaving comments on blogs is a great way to raise your company’s profile and get some all-important backlinks to your own website or blog. Blogging is all about conversations and the comments section is where it all happens. If you’re serious about social media marketing, you should get into the habit of commenting on blogs. There are pitfalls, which could damage your online reputation, so here are a few pointers to keep your blog commenting on the straight and narrow.
Before you jump in with both feet, do a bit of research. Try to find the most influential blogs in your industry or sector by looking for the ones that are obviously written by experts. Select half a dozen blogs to follow and spend a couple of weeks reading all the new posts and comments. This way, you’ll become familiar with the blogger and the other people who regularly leave comments. Once you’ve done your research, you’re ready to start commenting. Follwo these tips to make sure your commenting is successful:

If the blogger has a commenting guidelines page, read it before you leave a comment.
Refer to the blogger by name at the start of the comment, that way he or she will know you’re a real person and not automated spam.
Make sure your comment adds value or don’t bother. “Great post! Well done!” adds nothing of any interest and just looks like spam.
You see where it says to enter your name? Well, put your name there. Your name isn’t SomeOnlineStore.com. You should always be a real person, with a real name in your comment signature. Don’t treat the ‘name’ field in the comment form as an opportunity to shoe horn your URL into the comment. Most blog owners will delete comments like that as spam.
Make sure your own blog has catchy titles for its posts. When you comment on a site that is using the ComLuv plugin, it shows the title of your last post with a live link to it. The more interesting the title, the more people will click on it.
If you want to build a relationship with the blog owner, do them a favour and Tweet their post or give them a Facebook ‘like’. Lots of blogs have social ‘like’ buttons in a prominent place next to the posts and it’s just a matter of clicking them.

By getting into the habit of blog commenting you can really benefit your own blog and your link building efforts. Why not start the ball rolling by adding a pithy and intelligent comment to this post!
In Make The Most of Blog Comments – Part 2, we will look at commenting from a blogger’s point of view.