Social Media is no longer about chatting with your friends. It’s about driving business. This book shows you how it can for yours.
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Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by David Murton. See more details on him below.
Many savvy blog and website owners are now understanding how blog commenting can serve as a powerful marketing strategy. By posting insightful, valuable comments on blog articles related to your own niche, you can drive traffic to your site and increase its authoritativeness within your industry.
Why Should You Engage in Blog Commenting?
Engaging in blog commenting is one of the best ways in increase your visibility to online readers interested in your niche. When you include a link to your website or blog in a worthwhile, relevant comment, you’ll drive traffic directly to your site. Perhaps best of all, the traffic will represent individuals who are actually interested in reading your content before they visit. With the recent proliferation of 4g wireless Internet, there are more individuals than ever with constant access to blogs via mobile devices. This, subsequently, leads to an even bigger exposure for your comments.
Consistently posting thoughtful, valuable blog comments will cause other industry professionals to take notice, leading to additional business opportunities and links from their sites to yours. By obtaining additional high quality inbound links, you’ll generate more traffic.
How to Find Blogs Related to Your Niche
image via ereleases.com
Before starting a blog commenting marketing campaign, it’s important to find blogs that are closely related to your industry. Accomplish this by searching for “[your niche] blogs list” or viewing a blog carnival, which is a blog post that has several links to blog articles related to a particular niche. Use those links to find blogs that will be useful during your campaign. You should also make sure to follow links posted by other commenters, as they will often take you to yet another relevant source.
Get Involved and Become Part of the Community
As a general rule, it’s better to become involved in five to six blogs on which you’ll post valuable comments instead of attempting to follow and comment on every blog you find that’s related to your industry. Quality rules over quantity, and attempts at blanket commenting may be viewed as spamming, which can actually reduce your credibility and drive traffic away from your site.
Tips for Writing Comments that Will Get Attention
The act of posting a comment isn’t as important as the actual content of your comment or the ways in which you format it. By posting thoughtful, ethical blog comments, you’ll attract the attention you’re seeking.
- Format your blog comment properly, just as you’d format an original article on your own blog.
- Strive to challenge the theory of a blog poster or commenter without attacking them. Kindness will show readers that you’re a mature, experienced authority regarding your niche.
- Ensure that your comment brings a new element to the discussion instead of reiterating something that was already posted. This will encourage further discussion directly related to your comment.
- Take your time. The best blog comments are carefully constructed, insightful and clearly, succinctly state your opinions.
When Should You Get Involved in a Discussion?
The best time to comment on a blog post is when the article has yet to receive a comment. By commenting first, future readers of the article will be more likely to notice your comment.
It’s also wise to allocate the majority of your blog comments to posts that are tweeted or otherwise shared often. This will ensure that your comments are receiving as much exposure as possible.
Encouraging People to Post at Your Own Blog
When individuals post high quality comments on your blog, it indicates to your readership that people in your niche actually care about the content you post. This, in turn, can generate additional repeat-visit traffic. There are several ways to encourage commenting at your own blog:
- Answer comments promptly. When an individual sees that his comment was taken seriously, he’ll be more likely to comment in the future.
- Provide relevant resources, even if they include links to other websites. This won’t damage your traffic or sales nearly as much as you might believe and it will establish your site as a strong player in your niche, as opposed to an organization that only cares about its bottom line.
- Take an attitude of kindness, decisiveness and confidence when responding to comments. Be respectful, and don’t be afraid to say so when you don’t know the answer to a question. Words and phrases such as “I guess,” “probably” and “maybe” indicate uncertainty and may damage your credibility.
- Employ the use of a spam filter or a forum moderator to keep your blog comment areas clean. If your blog article is followed by a series of rude, immature or off-topic comments, more respectable readers will be less likely to post comments of their own.
Additional Blog Commenting Tips
The following assorted tips can further increase the value of your blog commenting campaign:
- There’s no need for blatant self-promotion. By posting useful, relevant information directly related to your niche, people will naturally find your site.
- Do not use your username as a targeted keyword. The best alternative is to use your real name. This gives your comment a human touch that average Internet readers can relate to.
- Don’t provide links to your article in every single post. Instead, only do this when it adds real value. Otherwise, your username should be the only thing in your comment that links to your website or blog.
- Don’t be afraid to actively involve yourself in a discussion, even if your opinion differs from that of the previous poster’s. Although politeness goes a long way, repeated utterances of “I definitely agree” and “you are absolutely right” are rarely interesting, and give readers little reason to visit your site.
- Avoid one-dimensional comments such as “very good post” without elaborating. Instead, choose a specific part of the post on which to comment and explain why you disagree or agree with the original poster while adding your own take on the information.
Related articles
- 5 Ways To Get Visitors To Comment (iblogzone.com)
- 21 Brilliant Bloggers Talk About Commenting (blogworld.com)
- Blog Comments for SEO (seo-theory.com)
- 7 Ways to Leave Comments and Drive Traffic Back to Your Blog (preciseinternetmarketing.com)
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Comments Policy
Comments on Social Media Explorer are open to anyone. However, I will remove any comment that is disrespectful and not in the spirit of intelligent discourse. You are welcome to leave links to content relevant to the conversation, but I reserve the right to remove it if I don't see the relevancy. Be nice, have fun. Fair?