Comments Capture Reader Interest
When I read all the individual comments placed on a post, I click over to view the sites of the people who leave the comments. There is no mystery about that! If you comment on other blogs, people who read these blogs will follow through and visit your site. Typically, viewers will read your comment before they visit your site. And that is where the power of capturing readers interest through commenting kicks in. When you comment on another blog, make it a powerful, professional, and compelling comment. Put equal amount of effort into your comment as you would do with a post on your own blog.
“A comment on another blog is a direct reflection of what is expected to be found on your own site!”
When you comment on another site and say things like, “Hey, nice post” or “Wow, cool article” it doesn’t really contribute anything to that article. Secondly, it doesn’t sell yourself and convince readers to visit your site. If you take your time to contribute by adding some real thoughts or challenge the topic discussion, you will find that many people will investigate you further by visiting your site. If you follow what I have suggested in my Successful Blogging Tips #2, then you will convert this reader into a regular reader.
Tips on Commenting
- Spell Check and review what write before publishing. Consider writing your comment in a word processor program such as Microsoft Word.
- Place as much value in your comments made on other sites as you do with your own posts made on yours.
- Be professional, informative and provide useful information to the readers on other blogs.
- Your comments are a direct reflection on you. People judge you and the level of quality of your site after reading your comment without even visiting your site. When they visit your site after reading a comment you wrote, this simply confirms what they thought about you prior to visiting.
- Choose one to five blogs (depending on how much time you can invest) that you enjoy a lot and can relate well to. Set a goal to become the top commenter.
- Play an active roll in helping another blog grow by contributing to it and being an assistant leader.
- Comment on other sites with open ended questions. Encourage readers to contribute their thoughts and help the site owner by keeping the ball rolling.
Many people wonder why their site doesn’t do well in the search engines. Time is a main factorization in this. The type of content you write as well as the level of competition found in the search engines is another. Search engines make a guess about what your site is about. However, you know perfectly what your site is about. And by commenting, you can hand pick who you want to visit your site. Comment on sites that target the exact type of people you want to have visit your site. More likely, if readers like your site and also have a site of their own, you can exchange links and gain even more relevant traffic to your site. All in all, commenting on other sites plays an active roll towards the success of your own.
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22 comments
I like to use ‘IESpell’ (since yes, I do use IE, but Firefox 2.0 has one built in!) to spell-check my comments before I post. Very handy and quick.
http://www.iespell.com/
Sure fire ways to get more traffic:
1. Comment on other people’s blogs.
2. Drop a few links to other people’s blogs in your daily posts.
3. Do link exchanges with people, be they blogroll or otherwise.
Of the three of these, commenting on other blogs is by far the best way to get people to visit your blog & comment. Think about it, what do you do if someone comments on your blog? You at least visit their blog don’t you? Most times people will feel the need to “pay you back” and will post comments on your blog too.
Before you know it, they’ll add you to their RSS subs & then to their blogroll. Perhaps the best networking blogger I’ve seen to date is GoldCoaster. Check out his blog, and then start paying attention to all the places you see his name around the blogosphere!
Thanks again Gary.
Comments may be one of the best ways to capture other bloggers attention. People always capture my attention when they post comments. Especially when it’s fairly consistent.
Really good post.
GoldCoaster is a big comment junkie… and takes first prize! He is a huge contributor here on my site as well as many of the sites I visit on a daily basis. Good call on that one Matt.
Thanks for the compliment George, I am glad you like the article. You always capture my attention when you comment!
* Anyone looking for advise on making money online, check out George’s site.
George’s site is a walking example of keyword targeting in the SERPs. He has a leading site on the front page of the serps for keyword: Make Money Online.
Keep up the great work George. I enjoy reading your site and regret not making more a priority on contributing more over there.
Yea I follow visit peoples blog because of comments all the time. It’s always a good way to get extra visitors, plus its good to stay active in the blogosphere. Yet another great tip from Garry.
Thanks Daniel for the comment.
Garry,
You might want to check out the challenge that Chris Garrett came out with, after I tagged him:
http://www.chrisg.com/what-is-a-blog-meme/
Thought it might interest you.
I think I did that months ago from JohnTp’s site. Is that the same thing? I just glanced at it and saw the superman icon.
No, he is challenging you to make a meme good enough for him to participate in.
PS. I think his “challenge” is pretty decent linkbait, eh?
Ok I am reading about it. I have to admit, there are tons that I can play and some I play to be nice and not make people feel left out. But lately, it almost daily where I get an email or a ping asking to play. If I participated in everyone, as you know, my blog would be nothing but blog memes. So, I too subject some of these games to selection. Thanks for the reference and I will read the post.
Garry this is absolutely dead on! Lately I’ve found myself commenting more and more on other blogs that I visit daily. I noticed that my traffic was increasing slightly and when I checked the referrers I noticed quite a few coming from the comments that I had made only hours before. Given that my blog is currently one of many in a highly competitive field I can’t try hard enough to get regular readers. If anyone out there questions these tips and their usefulness to the community look no further. I’ve implemented several of these tips and already seen my traffic improve by 65% in the past week. I owe it all to Garry.
Keen,
That is an awesome success story. I am so happy to discover that I have helped you so much!
Your site is a great example of what I am talking about. The appearance of your site is awesome! It is creative and unique and stands out from the crowd. So, in your situation once you get someone to actually click to view your site, you have a high conversion rate of converting visitors into regular readers.
Look at it like stages:
(1) Get traffic to your site.
(2) When traffic comes to your site, keep them as regular readers.
(3) When you have regular readers, develop ways to get them to contribute.
Stage One – Getting Traffic
Commenting on other sites, SEO’ing your site for long term SERP listing, etc.
Stage Two – Converting Traffic into Regular Readers
Site looks appealing and top notch. Design is very fluid like and the content and navigation flow like a river or a stream. All of which have a controlled order in how you want the information displayed.
Stage Three – Interact With Your Readers
Once you have success with gaining traffic and success with converting traffic into regular readers, then you need to develop creative elements in your writing that encourage and create a desire for your readers to contribute.
Your site is looking great! and I am very happy to hear about the success story. Keep on keeping on! Good Luck! and keep me posted!
Love the tip as always Garry. I wanted to add that I am guilty of following those that leave comments, but it must be something catchy, sassy or a little bit long. I normally don’t view someone that leaves a Great Post and that’s it…not unless they are the only one to comment.
Another thing for your readers to think about is how their comment figure looks. This is the other thing that’ll get me to follow through. No pictures, normally don’t get clicked. Not unless I’ve seen them half a dozen times and realize if we are both frequenting the same place then I’m likely to find something interesting about them. Pictures of all types can get more clickthroughs.
Comment names are the final thing for me. Something with just a bunch of letters looks like spam to me and I normally stay away from that. I like to find someone with funny titles, names or lets me know what their site is about. Okay, I’ve left you a blog entry, I better go for now.
I’m using Firefox 2.0, and it has a spell-check feature. I usually review my comment before clicking post it button. But it would be a good feature edit comments for x more minutes after sending it.
thanks for reminding me about that. I just installed the Avatars back again. So we all can see what we look like are all about! MyBlogLog is fun and I love displaying the avatars here in the comments!
Kyle’s Cove had that feature up and then quickly went away… I have been meaning to ask Kyle what happened with that. He loves plugins and does a lot with testing them. Let’s see if he drops a comment here and talks about that.
I like the pictures by the comments as well. I should probably install it on my blog.
George,
I am happy to help you with that. The plugin is called MyAvatars. You can find the plugin download here and if you need any help installing it let me know.
It requires you to add a line of code into your comments.php file, other than that, it’s a snap and provides so much for your readers!
Rob, I use IE7 also. I have heard of IESpell before. How long have you been using it and also have you tried the spell check feature in the Google Toolbar?
Thanks Garry. I will check it out. I have another plug-in I want to install soon as well.
[...] Comments Capture Reader Interest Garry wrote a good post about the importance of commenting on blogs. [...]
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