Been a bit lax this week on getting here and posting but something I read today triggered some ideas. I will be doing a series of posts about commenting both the getting and going out and commenting on other blogs.
Some of it has just become in grained as it is a rare day when I do not comment on someone’s blog and I have been fortunate that although I don’t get as many comments as I would like (and doubt I ever will even if it was a hundred a day cause I am a greedy Old bald Guy) I do get comments regularly.
Now to the post that got my creative juices going. It was from my friend Alex Syseof and you should go read it.
Alex puts out some good content and has been a guest blogger here as I have been there. Then let me know what you think and what questions you have about commenting by leaving a comment below.
(Yes that is one way that I try to increase comments )
About the author
Mike Paetzold got started blogging in 2003 and has become an expert on using WordPress. He has become known as The WordPress Guy.
After being an under ground niche marketer using his blogs he has surfaced to share some of the ways he uses blogs to enter various niches profitably.
If you would like help in building your business check out my coaching offer.
Okay I know it is a pain trying to keep up with everything you hear about each and every day. Today I am going to address something simple for those that actually participate in the conversations going on in the blogosphere.
See the defauilt on WordPress blogs is to use Gravatar for comments. Most people don’t go through all the settings when they create a new blog so the vast majority of blogs will look for your gravatar when you comment. Besides the gravatar system works and even though I do go through the settings I still use it because it is one of the more popular ones.
Gravatar allows you to link your email to your picture and have it display when you post a comment. Just go to http://gravatar.com and follow the directions to tie your email address and picture together.
Now I would much rather have people reading my comments see my picture to the left rather than the default gravatar image to the right.
It helps people know who I am especially as I use the same picture on Facebook, Twitter, MyBlogLog and any other social network where I can add a picture to my profile.
Now for you bashful types it does not have to be a picture of you. It can be whatever avatar you use to brand yourself with on the social networks and forums. I have a buddy who uses a fish graphic on Twitter and went to his picture and people ignored him because he was no longer the grinning fish and they did not recognize his tweets.
The whole reason for this post is that on average less than half of the commenters on this blog have a gravatar. I work hard to make sure that people adding to the conversation here get the maximum reward for it and this will increase the value you get from commenting here. So go get your avatar set up at http://gravatar.com so that all my commenters get maximum branding. It only takes a few quick minutes.
As always your questions and comments are appreciated.
MyBlogLog can be a great way to do research on quite a few things including…
Your social interaction
Your community interactions
What’s hot
Blog traffic research
Topic research
One of the things I really like is checking my own usage of social sites. On your home page you can see what you have bookmarked, blogs you have commented on, your latest blog posts, videos you have added and anything else that has changed on any of the sites you have added to your profile.
Just click the new with then the me radio button. As you can see in the image it is showing a comment I made, a bookmark, a blog post and a tweet on Twitter. There is also an RSS subscription for this which would allow me to add the feed into my reader. Not something I would do for myself (I usually know what I have done – not always but most of the time ) but I do use it for some of the other information.
The big thing I look for on this is how much of what I am doing is with others. After all social networks work best when you are sharing not just your stuff but others also. It is a reminder to me if I start becoming a me networker and not a networker.
Now if you change to view new in my neighborhood you will see what activities your community has and what they are posting, tweeting and bookmarking etc. This can be valuable to see new topics that are generating activity within your tribe. This is the one that I have added to my reader as I check the reader more often than I check in at MyBlogLog.
Clicking on Hot In MyCommunities will give you the top posts that people are viewing and what is going on in the community.
Just another way to see what is popular within the areas you have shown interest.
Blog traffic research we touched upon in the previous post on setting up your tracking. This information lets you know what is working and what is not so you can work on improving your traffic and how you serve your community.
Finally there is topic research. Stick your topic in the search bar and you can get results like below. I just added tattoos to test.
This has brought back a list of 73 people who have blogged on the subject and a listing of 160 different blogs. This will take a bit of time but some digging on a topic can help you find others you may want to follow on that topic and blogs that you may want to read and comment on.
This can be a great way to find these types of resources if you are going into a new niche. Now a caveat it will take a bit of time and effort to sort out the garbage from the worthwhile but if you add 10 potential places to comment and start a conversation it can be worth the effort.
So this gives you 5 different ways you can use MyBlogLog for research but understand that being active in more communities, having all of your social sites in your profile and being active make this more powerful. It is case where the more effort you put in the more valuable the results you will get from it.
As always your input and any tricks you care to share that have been overlooked are appreciated.
One of the things that has come about because of blog spammers is the default no follow link built into WordPress. I do understand why they did it but I prefer to reward those that actually take part in the conversation on my blogs.
See if you are going to add to my content and good comments do that, then you should get something for your effort too. Now this does take a bit more work on my part.
To allow me to do this I added a plugin called do follow so that all the links from your comments are set up to follow and will help you with your linking with the search engines.
The work comes in because I now have to monitor all comments. It takes a bit more effort on my part because there are way to many pieces of software that let people know that you are following.
This does bring in the bot software that adds generic comments on the subject. Most times it is relatively easy to tell these and click the spam button in the dashboard but it is a bit more effort.
The key is that using do follow makes it beneficial for people to comment and the more interactivity you can generate the better your blog will perform.
As always your questions and comments are welcomed.
Earlier in the traffic series I discussed blog commenting. Blog commenting is one of those win win situations. The blog owner wins because they get more fresh content and the commenter wins because they get a link back to their site and potential visitors clicking through to their site.
Caveat – This is based on quality comments and not people just spamming for links. Yes actually add value with your comments. Nuff said!
Also the default for WordPress is to use no follow links for commenting. Reward your commenters by using the do follow plugin so they get the benefit of the link. I do.
Comment Luv is a plugin I use here and on other blogs to reward commenters. When you add your url it will go look for your latest post and if it can find it will add a direct link to it as part of your comment.
This gives back a bit more to the people that are helping you by adding additional quality content to your blog.
Well to help promote the use of this plugin the creators have started a contest and you can win by simply using the plugin and registering your blog with them. This means that anyone leaving a comment here has the chance to win a prize from comment luv because this blog has been registered there.
The contest is run by the owners of Comment Luv and while we participate here we have nothing to do with the rewarding of any prizes and are not liable for any part of it.
So take care of your commenters by using Comment Luv and Do Follow and increase the interactivity of your blog.
As always your question and comments are welcomed.
This is the next installment in the generating traffic series so the 5 comment rule is in effect.
Commenting can deliver traffic to your site whether or not the blog follows comments or not if…
You add to the conversation. It really isn’t that hard. Stay away from the I like whatever, actually read the post and comment with your opinion. You really need to add something. A prefect example is the previous post here on article writing. Check out the comments and you will see that most added to the value of the article.
A few were just a thank you comment but quite a few either added good information (thank you) or asked for clarification.
Now here are some tips for finding good places to comment on. Search the keywords that you want to rank for are on your blog and take the time to go through and find the active blogs on these topics. You can also search at Technorati for your topics.
Add these into your Google Reader (one of my favorite tools) so you can see when they are updated all from one place.
There are definitely advantages to commenting sooner rather than later, Then everyone that reads the post will see your comment and you will get more people clicking through to your blog if you have added solid information to the conversation.
If they follow you will also get a link back to your blog if your comment gets approved and it will most times of you are adding to the conversation. Both of these will add traffic to your blog.
Finally you can trackback to posts you find that are a good resource. There was a good guest post over at John Cow blog about Traffic From Commenting and they just had a good video added there about Comment Hitching.
This will help me add back links here but…
It helps them because I am linking to their content and it helps you as a reader because I have found more quality content on this topic for you.
Anyone reading those posts at John Cow that comes back to this post is getting more of the content they are looking for.
Everyone wins.
Now if I tried to trackback on a different topic it would be spam. It would not help you the reader it would only be trying to get back links. The same thing with irrelevant comments that don’t add to the conversation.
The key whether you are commenting or tracking back is to add good content to your site and the other persons site.
As always your comments are welcomed and needed for the next post in this series.
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Now I would much rather have people reading my comments see my picture to the left rather than the default gravatar image to the right.
