Beau wrote me an email asking the following: “Some time ago, you wrote a post called “40 Dead Simple Ways to Get More Comments on Your Blog.” This is a great post, and #27 in particular intrigues me: “Leave comments on other blogs.” You state: “The best way to grow your blog is to leave it.”
Could you share with me briefly just how this works? How is it that commenting on other blogs brings traffic back to one’s own blog? I suppose I could always leave my blog URL in a comment on someone else’s blog, but at a certain point this seems like spamming to me. My sense is that “URL-dropping” is not exactly what you had in mind here.”
Beau thanks for the question, and here is Beau’s blog.
Let me give you an example of this idea from 2005 when I started blogging. I was completely new to blogging, and I was writing on a group advertising blog Beyond Madison Avenue. Personally, I was hoping the blog could be a tool I could use to help me land a job. So I had a very vested interest in seeing it succeed.
Now I had no idea what blogging was about, but I knew I need a lot of visitors and a lot of comments. And BMA had neither. So I started reading all the supposed ‘best’ blogs, with the thinking being that I could learn from these other bloggers what the ‘secret’ to blogging success was, and then copy it for BMA. So for the next few weeks, I started reading and studying the top blogs religiously. At the same time, I was writing every day for BMA, sometimes as many as 4 posts a day. Nothing was happening. No traffic, no comments, virtual tumbleweeds were rolling by and taunting me.
And I really wasn’t learning anything from the blogs I was reading, either. But as I was reading I was discovering new blogs that were interesting, and once in a while I’d even leave a comment on a post if I thought it was interesting. Over the next couple of weeks, I discovered more blogs, and left more comments on blog posts.
Then suddenly one day, BMA started getting comments. At first it was only a couple, then every new post we wrote would start getting comments within an hour or two. In a week we’d gone from a blog with zero comments from readers, to one where every new post was getting 5-10 comments!
Which was amazing, but I still had no idea what had prompted the change. Then one day a reader left a comment and said that they were thanking me for the comment I had left on their blog, and wanted to come leave a comment on my blog. That’s when it hit me: All these comments were coming from bloggers who wrote blogs that I had already commented on! They had followed the link back in my comment to come check out my blog!
Beau thats when I learned one of the most fundamental truths of building engagement via social media: The more you participate, the more participation you get. The more comments I left on other blogs, the more comments I got back on my blog. And it doesn’t work just for blogs, the more active I am on Twitter, the more tweets I get as well as followers. And I don’t mean simply ‘name-dropping’ but actually participating in conversations and trying to build the discussion.
When you participate via social media, it raises your awareness. It’s a way of getting your name out there, and getting people to notice you.
Now for increasing comments on your blog by leaving it, here would be my tips:
1 – Watch your referral traffic. If you don’t have a way to track your blog’s stats, there are many free options available. I use both SiteMeter and Google Analytics here. But tracking your referral traffic will show you who is linking to your blog. If you see from your referral traffic that another blogger has linked to your blog, go back to their blog and thank them. Or even write them an email thanking them. That simply encourages them to link to your blog again, plus comment on your blog.
2 – Leave comments on the blogs of readers that comment on your blog. Same as above, this simply encourages them to leave more comments on your blog, because you are doing the same for them. It’s all about rewarding the type of behavior that you want to encourage. This is one that I honestly don’t do as much as I should.
3 – Leave comments on blogs that are influential to your readers. Think about where your readers are going now to get their information and connect with each other, and go there. By connecting with them there, leaving comments on posts, etc, you will get on their radars. By participating in their space, that will encourage them to come check you out on your blog.
So those are some ideas on growing interaction on your blog, by leaving it. Again, the key to building interaction via social media is to participate. Great content will only help you if people know it exists, and that’s where interacting with others in THEIR space helps you build your own awareness.
Hi Mack,
Excellent answer to Beau’s question and a really important lesson for all bloggers. When I first started blogging I thought all it would take is the time it takes to actually write the posts. I soon realised though that it takes much more investment in terms of time and effort than I thought. Even the most well written and cutting-edge blogs require the author to reach out and engage with the rest of the blogging community in order to build a network of people who comment. Reciprocity is a wonderful thing!
Jed
Mack,
Great tips and points to consider. It’s true, you can’t expect to get comments/engagement on your own blog if you’re not out there engaging with others.
For me, I try and connect with readers not just through the comments on their blog, I’ll also follow them and connect with them on any social networks they might be active on so as to carry the discussion/engagement beyond the comments. You get to know some really cool people that way (but of course, you know that already) 🙂
@jedlangdon Blogging’s not always a “if you build it, they will come” sorta thing and most people think it is. It definitely takes just as much work to promote your content than it does to write it. For me, sometimes it takes me even longer to find a good darn photo for a post, heh 🙂
But how do you do this and do everything else? That is my biggest challenge. I try to leave at least one comment on another blog site everyday pointing back to something relevant on our company blog. The problem is that a lot of blog sites have approval processes for comments and I see people taking out the link to my blog – AND – I read and comment on a lot of blogs that are for more personal reasons (marketing focused) rather than e-commerce (company’s target market). Where do you get the balance? Big challenge for me. Build myself or build my company. How can I do both with everything else I have to do?
@C_Pappas Hey Christina, don’t even worry about linking to something relevant on your company blog. What you want to do is to contribute and when others see how smart and valuable your comments are, THAT will prompt them to go check out your blog. If you leave comments and every one includes a link to a post on your company blog (even if it is totally relevant to the topic at hand), it looks like spam to a lot of people.
As for balancing personal vs professional, one thing you could start doing on the professional side, if you aren’t already, is start reading the top blogs/sites covering that space. This will help you stay current on news of importance in the space (helping you do your job better), but if you occasionally leave comments on these blogs/sites, that will help push that traffic back.
Don’t think of it as ‘homework’, and don’t focus on leaving X number of comments a week. Just start reading the top blogs covering your space, and comment when you feel that you can add something to the conversation. Over time, it will begin to bear fruit. Watch your referral traffic closely, and that will help you see which sites are sending you traffic from the comments you are leaving there.
@RicardoBueno Right, and the interaction doesn’t have to happen on a blog, I do most of my interacting on Twitter, and that drives comments here, as you proved 😉 But the key is, I participate, and the more I participate, the more others tend to participate back. We sometimes try to make this social media stuff harder than it needs to be.
I have been doing this for awhile and it really does work. Commenting on other peoples blogs within your niche and outside is very important because your opening up your blog to so many people. Soon enough the blogger and other commentators are going to notice you on their blog and come and check yours out. This happened to me when I always left a comment on dannybrown blog and he finally took a look at mine. Tracking your referrals on Google analytics is a good concept. I open mine up to the 100 referrals that I receive and target those sites to always try and make a comment on.
Lately I have been in the phase of focusing on producing good content and waiting for people to find me. I have not had the results I want. I can see that your way of getting out of your blog to make it grow is a good plan. I’ve been somewhat skeptical about posting comments on other blogs as a way to get backlinks. It seems like there are too many obstacles to that these days. But I can see that backlinks is not the point here. Rather, it is just a way of actually engaging with others. That does make sense. Very helpful post here, Mack.
One thing I would add, when you comment on a blog post you think your Twitter followers will appreciate, be sure to tweet a shortened link to the post with @author or @blog and a #hashtag keyword. This increases your visibility to the author/blog and people monitoring the keyword,. It also highlights your involvement in the conversation. Tweeps who see that you comment on blogs will comment on your blog to get you to comment on theirs. And so on.
PS. I would schedule that tweet to go out tomorrow if I thought it might take some time for my comment to be approved.
Great insights here Mack. I think the really lovely thing about Social Media is that it operates in a truly social way. Blogs are maybe the most “private” outlet, and sometimes we can think of them as our own little universe, which they can be. But they are still part of the great social sphere, and the experience you have shared is really testament to that. We are all trying to get exposure, and I think it’s wrong to think of leaving your blog to go comment elsewhere as a kind of “tactic” for that exposure. It certainly is, but it’s also kind of supposed to be the point of blogs to begin with. That’s how we find the community we want to be participants in. By studiously reading what other people write and engaging them in their universe (and on Twitter), we are not only leaving link trails back to our stuff, but seeing what the community is saying, seeing what is relevant, GETTING GOOD IDEAS, which is why we should be doing all of this anyway. Thanks for emphasizing all of this and the super helpful tips. @RyoatCision
@tammikibler@blog Good thoughts and great point about alerting Twitter users to your comment.
@Justicewordlaw Is your first name really ‘Justice’? Because I think that’s about the coolest name ever 😉
@RyoatCision I do some of my best thinking and learning by having discussions with other people. Whether that’s on a blog or on some other social network. Like you said, it’s a great way to generate “good ideas.”
@MarkTanney Re: your comment: “I have been in the phase of focusing on producing good content and waiting for people to find me.” Here are my thoughts… Blogging isn’t exactly one of those, “if you build it, they will come” sort of things. You still have to work at getting people to come visit your good content. You do that by getting out there and playing in other people’s communities.
I don’t see a shortcut or other way around it. If you want people to notice you, you have to make yourself get noticed by leaving comments. Having discussions. Engaging in other social networks.
Just thinking out-loud here Mark and fostering a discussion 🙂
@MackCollier Yeah that is my real name and thanks.
You have given me hope for my blog! Thanks for the great tips.
Mack,
Thanks for this great answer, and thanks to others as well for the helpful comments. I guess the fact that I am writing this comment means that I am putting your advice into practice, Mack.
Okay. I’m cracking up at this because I sat down tonight thinking, “Jessica, you have GOT to go comment on some blogs, you have been the WORST return commenter lately”.
So there you go. 🙂
Commenting is a great way to make your presence felt and also get more traffic to website. Leaving good comments where readers would like to connect make our web presence felt. Thanks for the share.
I think the logical follow on questions for this would involve how much time do you spend and what blogs do you target and leave comments on. For instance, I may love several blogs (and IF you are a business, they may be your customers) however, if they do not get much traffic, then you have gained one person. It’s more than you had before, true, but a business cannot truly get moving based on picking up one person here and there. I love being social and chatting with people. I even join in on Blogchat when I can, simply because I love to help and learn more, but should I be targeting bigger blogs or people with more followers? Maybe a mixture of both?
I ask, because I 100% agree with what you are saying here, yet I have an (old) friend from high school who is a successful PR manager for a dining group in OKC. I asked her once if she would consider visiting a forum I had started and asked her a few additional questions; trying to pick up my numbers a bit. She basically told me that asking her—just one person—wasn’t going to do anything for my business and that I needed to read some PR books and educate myself. Probably good advice, no doubt, but I see a repeat of the same happening with the blog hopping/commenting.
What do you think?
Nice post Mack.
I think often times bloggers underestimate the amount of time/energy it takes to create content as well as interact in meaningful ways with other bloggers content. It certainly is a two-way street that takes a long time to develop.
One thing I’ve started to do recently is log all the blogs I comment on and whether the author reciprocates on the post itself or by visiting my own blog. I don’t think just going out and interacting with other bloggers is enough. At the end of the day, a metric always helps.
Julian
Some great tips here, and I’m totally a subscriber to the thought of communicating with other communities to bring traffic to your own. If you do it enough with a subtle link in your username or livefyre profile to your blog you’ll soon be surprised at the number of referrals you get, especially if the content you’re posting outside your site is as good as that on it.
As someone that is new to blogging, I found this to be very helpful. I also found it interesting that the same things we should be doing to build our relationships in real life are, in essence, the very same things we should be doing via social media. As we invest ourselves in others, they in turn will invest in us (this isn’t always true, but is definitely a good rule of thumb to live by). Great post, Mack!
Does leaving comments on other people’s blogs help from a backlinking or SEO point of view? I think it must because of all the spam comments out there. I’m wondering if links to your URL left in comments improve your page rank. Can you give any advice as to what should be put in the comments in order to get the maximum results as far as SEO, not just new commenters. I’m a blogging and SEO newbie, but I would like to do what I can. -Lola at http://www.dharmakilleddogma.blogspot.com
Is it more advantageous to comment on blogs with a higher Google rank than your own to please the algorithm gods? I have read elsewhere that leaving too many comments can actually hurt your Google rank even if you leave out the URLs?? Again, since Google doesn’t publish this info, it’s all
Speculation.
This is good bit of info, i have been an avid commentor on other blogs, I check their content and post sincere comments. I have seen them come and post in my blog, but this is like a disease: I comment, you comment, I dont you dont! How long can a blog sustain by just commenting on others
Write more, thats all I have to say. Literally, it seems as though you relied on the video to make your point.
You definitely know what youre talking about, why waste your intelligence on just posting videos
to your site when you could be giving us something informative to read?
Great ideas! Absorbing like a sponge…and I will keep reading your tips.
Sheila
http://www.mykentuckyliv.com