Do You Have A Blog Commenting Strategy?

I first spoke about blog commenting about 6 weeks ago and I have been doing it daily ever since. My October stats revealed that the strategy had brought in almost 700 direct visitors resulting in a large growth of RSS subscribers.

Furthermore, commenting on some high profile blogs has attracted the attention of the bloggers and have resulted in extra publicity for me, which I never would have got if I had not started commenting. So with the ‘why bother?’ out of the way, I’d like to explain what my strategy is, so you can put it to use on your own blogs.

How I Got Started

I first decided that I wanted to focus on a small group of blogs but I didn’t have a system to manage it so before long I just had a massive list of blogs that I commented on in no particular order with no real focus.

At this point I decided that I needed to clarify exactly what my purpose was and figure out how to achieve it in the most efficient manner.

What’s The Purpose of Blog Comments?

I have several distinct goals when it comes to leaving comments on other peoples blogs. They are:

1. Grab the attention of the readers
2. Grab the attention of the blogger
3. Develop my personal brand
4. Create some backlinks

It’s quite amazing that blog commenting can do so much really! But something I noticed was that each of those goals requires a slightly different strategy.

Grab the Attention of the Readers

The primary purpose of blog commenting is to gain new readers by enticing readers of the target blog to my own. I believe there are three crucial factors to achieving this:

1. Quality of the comment – ‘great post’ is not going to get a click
2. Being an early commenter – not many people read the 50th comment
3. Commenting on current posts – activity is usually highest on a fresh post

To achieve these things, I need to strive to be one of the first people to comment on a post. Success here is largely a matter of geography. I am based in the UK so many of the high-traffic US blogs such as John Chow are published when I am asleep. By the time I see the posts, there are already many comments.

There’s not a lot I can do about this. However it has allowed me to be an early commenter on Australian blogs for the same reason. So it’s all swings and roundabouts – no matter where you live, there will be some blogs you can comment on early, and others you can’t. Just make the most of the ones you can and don’t sweat the others.

There is a tool you can use to make early commenting a little easier for those in your timezone and that is called Comment Sniper. This is a free tool that will poll your chosen blogs every few minutes to check for new posts. As soon as a new post appears the tool will let you know either via email or even SMS if you like. Using this you can know as soon as a blog you are targeting publishes a new post and be one of the first to comment. Download Comment Sniper free here.

Grab The Attention of the Blogger

On the flip side, timing has no relevance when it comes to attracting the attention of the blogger because most bloggers will read all comments, no matter how far down in the list they are, and no matter how old the post.

This is mainly a consideration when I decide to check out a new blog. I will get the last 20 or 30 posts and work through them, leaving comments where appropriate. The readers probably won’t see any of these but the blogger will and he or she will suddenly see my name pop up in his comment list several times.

If they are anything like me, they’ll click through to see who this new active commenter is. Attention grabbed!

Develop my Personal Brand

My brand is my name, and I suppose my picture. The way to reinforce my brand is simply to be everywhere! That way, people start to recognise the name and human curiosity may eventually result in a click through.

Of course, being everywhere is very time consuming and that is where the Top Commentator plugins come in very useful. I have found that the majority of blogs that use the TC plugin reset it monthly. As long as I keep myself on that list, my name (and link) stays there for a whole month. The higher up I am on the list, the better it looks.

So, when checking out a new blog for the first time, I’ll have a look at their plugin and determine just how many comments I would have to leave to get on it – this is something else which is not time sensitive.

But, and this is a big but – I will not post trash just to get on the list! There are some blogs that are so popular that getting on the list requires a huge number of comments. I’m not trying to game anybody so if that is the case, I regard that blog as if it does not have the plugin.

Get Some Backlinks

When I first started my comment strategy I didn’t really think about this motive too much as I was mainly trying to get the attention of the blogger and the readers. However if the blogs on which you are commenting are do-follow then this also becomes a viable link building strategy.

Now there is something you have to be very careful with here. We all know that for the most effective SEO, anchor text that is loaded with keywords is more effective than using a personal name. However this is seen as spammy – it is obvious that you are leaving the comment for the backlink and not because you want to contribute. Bloggers (including me) don’t like this! There are better ways of getting backlinks with your chosen anchor text, with blogs use your real name. Also, if you use some keyword such as “make money online” people won’t remember you and it makes it difficult to build a brand.

If you want to use blog commenting as a link building strategy then you really need to find do-follow blogs because an ordinary blog will only provide you with a real link if they use something like the Top Commenter plugin. There is a neat utility that allows you to search for such blogs called Comment Hut. This is a free piece of software which allows you to type in a search term and it goes off and searches for posts on do-follow blogs that match the criteria. Download Comment Hut Lite here.

Some Issues I have Encountered

Over the last few weeks I encountered quite a few issues that I did not necessarily anticipate…

I Can’t Think of Anything to Say

Many posts do not foster commenting – announcing some new widget that everybody knows about already, talking about your latest ad spot, apologising for not posting, and other time wasting posts.

If I have a blog on which I am consistently struggling to comment then I’m not going to force it so in the end I stopped worrying about that and didn’t try to force out comments when they were not free flowing.

Blogs With Multiple Writers

Many of the high traffic blogs are popular due to the sheer amount of posts that they produce and this is often due to having multiple writers. I don’t like many of these blogs – I much prefer blogs written by an individual where I can get to know the blogger over time.

For blogs with multiple writers, the goal of grabbing the attention of the blogger simply wasn’t present so the only really important goal was attracting the readers which was often difficult due to the traffic levels. Again, I simply stopped trying with these types of blogs.

Blogs That Give Pure Value

This was a problem that I did not anticipate – some of my favourite blogs write such excellent posts on topics that I know little about that all I can really think of to say is ‘wow, great post!’ and of course, that doesn’t fit in with my goals! An example of this is DoshDosh.

Maki writes very good posts and most of the time I really don’t have anything to add so I figure that perhaps I can’t get much attention from his readers but I can still get his attention by stumbling his posts, voting for them at Sphinn and um, blogging about him like I am right now :-)

Big Blogs With No Added Benefits

Most of the really big blogs don’t use Top Commentator plugins and they use the no-follow tag. I imagine this is because they have so many comments already that they really don’t want to encourage more as it is just a moderation headache for them. Copyblogger is a good example.

If these blogs are not in my timezone then I can’t get anywhere near the top of their comments, there’s no possibility of a backlink, and with so many comments the chances of attracting the attention of the blogger is slim. What to do? Move on…

Deriving a Strategy From These Goals & Issues

Based on all of this information I have gradually tweaked the system that I use and this is it:

1) Create a Hit-List for Early Commenting

For those blogs from which I am trying to grab the attention of the readers and have a reasonable chance of doing so, the key point is to comment as early as possible. I want to comment on any new posts first thing in the morning and I want to monitor any new posts than come in during the day.

Obviously I don’t want this list to be too large because this can cause a large distraction and time-sink. Which blogs should go in this list? I measure the traffic those blogs send me. Every two weeks I go through all the traffic from the previous fortnight and I rank the blogs in a numeric order. In my feed reader I prepend a number to the name of the blog, eg [03] Coutney Tuttle.

This gives me a list of blogs to focus my attention on in the order of how much traffic they sent me in the previous 2 weeks. This strategy is not perfect because of course if that blog linked to me I’ll get traffic from that too. That’s why I re-rank them every two weeks.

I check this list all through the day and if I see a post come in from a particularly popular blog, I’ll jump on it immediately. I’ll only have a maximum of 20 blogs in this list.

2) I Mark all Blogs Using Top Commentator Plugins

I also append a (TC) to the end of the name of any blog using the Top Commentator plugin, eg Blogging Experiment (TC). Note that I only do that if I can get on the list. I don’t do it for high trafficked blogs like John Chow or for those blogs that don’t reset their lists.

For these I read them at my leisure – perhaps every few days. Before checking the new posts I’ll check the TC list and see where I am on it and see what I need to do to stay on it. Again, if I find myself struggling to find something to say I won’t sweat it because I do not want to game any of these blogs.

3) I Mark all Blogs Using a Do-Follow Plugin

Similarly to the TC mark, I use DF to mark a blog that uses a Do-Follow plugin, eg BigBucksBlogger (DF). However there is no urgency, no sense of a minimum number of comments so for these blogs I’ll often just leave them until the weekend and I’ll only leave a comment if I feel really compelled to do so.

4) Place New Blogs in My Hit List for Testing

When I say ‘new’ blogs, I mean new to me, not new to the world. Until recently I tried to catch up with all the unread posts in my reader. I have given up on that now. At the time of this writing I still have 16 blogs that I have subscribed to over the last few months and still haven’t got around to reading at all.

The problem with that is that I might be giving my attention to a blog that’s sending me 10 new readers when I could potentially be ignoring a blog that could send me 20 instead. The only way I’ll know is to test it.

So a new strategy I have implemented is that each week I’ll pick some unread blogs to target. I read all the posts to get a feel for the blog, I’ll leave a few comments on the more recent posts and I’ll put them in my hit list but without a number. That way they get just as much chance as the ones that have proven themselves in terms of traffic.

This week I added Tyler Cruz, Sabahan and Internet Marketing Mind. Welcome to my hit-list :-)

5) Re-Rank & Purge Fortnightly

Every two weeks I re-rank all the blogs as per step 1 so I start with a clean slate every fortnight. Inevitably some blogs will drop off the list. What do I do with those? It depends. If the blog has dropped out of the list because I just could never find anything to say and that was because the blog just didn’t give me value then I unsubscribe! It’s harsh but if I’m not getting value from the blog then it has to go.

On the other hand there are some small blogs that are good quality but don’t have enough traffic to send any my way. If I really like a blog then I’m going to read it no matter what. The question becomes, do I comment or not? If that blog has a TC plugin then yes because if it’s low traffic it’s probably also low-comments and I really don’t need to leave many to stay in the list. If it doesn’t offer any comment benefits then I simply stop commenting.

6) Go With my Gut Instinct

Sometimes I’ll find blogs that send me traffic, have a TC plugin etc but for whatever reason I simply don’t like the blog. Maybe I don’t like the writing style of the author, maybe I think the posts are boring. Even if I get traffic, I’m not going to spend my time making an effort on a blog I don’t like so if that’s the case I just unscubscribe. Plenty more great blogs out there.

And conversely – some blogs I just like. They might have no traffic, offer no TC or DF plugin but they write great posts and I feel compelled to comment – then I do! My guidelines are really to make sure I make an effort with those blogs that can send me some traffic / links but not to make me super-obsessive over the whole thing.

Lastly, a Note About ‘Comments In’

In my original post I said that I would be pushing for more comments to come into this blog by introducing a Top Commentator widget. I did this and I’m really liking it. It resets every month and it’s interesting to see the new names that pop in there each month as I attract a new crowd of people as the weeks go on.

What has been really great is that this has attracted nothing but good quality comments. I had a fleeting concern that people might try to ‘game’ the widget by posting rubbish comments just to get on the list but this simply hasn’t happened at all. So thanks again to everybody who takes the time to comment here – I really do appreciate it.

Your Turn to Comment!

It wouldn’t be much of a post about blog commenting if I didn’t encourage you guys to comment now would it? So, if you are a blogger, do you comment on other blogs? Do you have a strategy for it or do you just wing it? Does this strategy sound too clinical? If you didn’t have a strategy before, does this post inspire you to have one now?

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