Comment Coattail Marketing Trumped - Learn Why

Bryan,

I think I hear what you’re saying.

You’re an active contributor on a blog and noticed another user dropping lower quality comments and you spoke up and said something to the person dropping the comments, expecting the blog author to pitch in and have your back, but instead, your efforts went ignored?

Did I get that right? If so, wow… that kind of sucks. Sorry to hear that.

@ Bryan,

Yeah I am not very fond of people adding their link into the comments when their name can be made hyperlinkable.

I don’t mind people including links in the comments if they reinforce a point or provide an external reference related to the topic being discussed.

On the flip side, I am very generous. I remember how it was when I first started blogging. I needed someone to give me a little break here and there. But at the time, I didn’t realize that all I had to do what contribute on other blogs and that would help build my reader base on my own blog.

@ Owen,

This might sound silly. But I am learning that sometimes if your posts are “Too Good” it doesn’t leave anything for people to comment on. Since you covered all the bases, nothing is left for people to comment on unless there are questions that stem or expand further or there are just moochers who say, “nice post of the day”

About a month ago, I had testing something that helped get more comments. I haven’t been doing it lately and I should, but at the bottom of my posts, I would end the post saying “What do you think?” or things like that.

Just like on this post, it says, “What are your thoughts?” same thing. I really want to know what people think.

While most people want comments (I do too) but I really want to know what people think.. I want to pick people’s brains more than I want comments. People are just as well to send me an email and tell me their thoughts as much as they can on the comments.

@ Cary,

Hey bud! Excellent question… I think it is most important to start a blog that follows a topic that you have a passion for. Typically, passion goes hand in hand with excellence. Not all the time… but most.

I say follow your passion rather than follow something you’re an expert in. Reason being is you can be an expert of a topic you don’t have passion for and it will become a chore to blog about it.

Either case… a blog author needs to find his foundation in a niche he equally has a passion for as well as being knowledgeable.

Second half to that is this. You then have to find a creative way with showing the world that you’re the read deal and not look like a loser in doing so.

In this post, I talk about riding the coattails of bloggers of higher authority. Many people do that… many people will drop in “one hit wonder” comments that basically say, “Hey I am a loser, I need traffic, can you visit my site so that I can be like you and no longer a loser?” If that same person instead took the time to contribute something useful, they would catch much more interest.

Now, your question asks, should I expand outside my niche in hopes of finding new readers?

I’ll speak from the heart and tell you what comes to mind.

Yes and No. If you write about a certain thing on your blog, such as woodworking and crafts, but then go dropping comments on a site that is about skydiving, then you’re not going to get a lot of new readers in return. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure there are a few skydivers that also have a workshop… but overall, the return will not pay for your time invested.

What I would do and have done and still do, is find an established blog and become a full time contributors and regular reader of that blog.

For example, we used woodworking as as example above. If I had a woodworking blog, I would invest a lot of time socializing in the DIY Network Blog section. Why? Because I can make a name for myself there. I can go there and slowly work my way in, make friends and build trust within the community. From there, people will become curious about who this Garry Conn guy is. Why will they be interested in learning more about me? Because, they will see the amazing comments I am leaving and how much I contribute. From there, the individual members of this community will voluntarily feel compelled to blog about me on their own blogs. Through time, I establish authority and become a huge contributor and expert within this community. I am respected and admired. Why? Because I didn’t act like a comment whore and I didn’t pretend to be someone I am not just for the purpose of scoring traffic.

@ Owen,

It’s tricky… I have learned that just blogging from the heart and blogging about things that I am truly an expert in wins more souls and gets more comments than other things. That right there sums up why I said, “screw trying to make money on the blog” and why I redesigned my blog and made it back into a typical standard blog design and feel.

GCDC is my blog where I am going to blog about what I want when I want… I hope that I continue to grow this place… believe me, I love the attention. I love having a full email box and I love the IM attention.

My suggestion to you is to just be yourself and people will come. A more detailed tip that can help you build traffic is just the same as what I said for Cary. However, if your case, I would hang out at high profile Linux message boards and then also, I would also determine what kind of Linux traffic do you want to your blog? Do you want other Linux experts such as yourself? Or do you want to attract noobs? Each require a different approach when you write content.

If you’re wanting to speak to noobs, then your blog posts need to cater to noobs. Meaning you need to speak to your readers as if you were speaking to me. For me personally, I would prefer catering to noobs rather than other experts.

I would contribute on other expert’s sites and make a name for myself there. But then provide my own style of tips on my own Linux blog.

I think you’re blog is great. I think you need to speak more plain Jane and show some more enthusiasm and emotion. The nature of programmers does not include being very personable or emotional. We talked about this once before on the phone.

I remember you showing me something that totally blew my mind… and you illustrated what you showed me no different than having the same level of enthusiasm someone would have reading the menu at McDonalds. LOL!!!

You have a ton of knowledge dude… and some of the things that you have shown me in the past almost makes me want to plug wires into your brain and just extract all that info out. You’re super cool and have a super cool and very unique blog with tons of potential.

I think you just need to get out into the right linux social hot spots and make a name for yourself.