Blog Commenting Strategy

Leaving comments on other blogs and forums is one of the most ideal ways to drive targeted visitors to your web page or blog. This is done by identifying blogs inside your specific niche market and then simply adding useful comments to those blog posts. Comments that you post on blogs within your market niche should be written so that they stop and capture the interest of the viewers and then drive those viewers to your personal website.

Over and above getting targeted traffic, there are several other advantages of leaving comments:

• When done properly, leaving comments gives you the potential opportunity of developing a networking relationship with the owner of the niche blog. This allows you the opportunity to develop a relationship with someone who has a similar interest as you and gives you a potential source to conduct future joint ventures with.

• Commenting on other blogs further more strengthens your message and influence as an expert. You are now not only seen on your own blogging platform but also on the blogging platform of other respected bloggers within your niche market community.

• Building natural back-links to your own website is yet another advantage to blog commenting. As you incorporate this ongoing marketing strategy, over time you will notice your blog being strengthened from an ever increasing amount of niche targeted back-links.

4 Tips To Consider Before You Start Leaving Blog Comments

The primary intent behind commenting on blogs is always to acquire new followers by appealing to the viewers of another blog (the blog you are commenting on) to visit your own blog. Here are a handful of common suggestions that will help you achieve your goals:

• Making hollow comments such as, “Awesome post!” is not going to give you the desired results you are looking for. The overall quality of your comment must be informative, value added and if possible, opinionated.  Believe it or not, strong opinions capture attention and get clicks.

• Keeping your comments relevant to the blog topic is vital. I am amazed at how many bloggers will leave spammy comments that have nothing to do with the original blog post. These are thoughtless short cuts that damage your credibility. Leaving value added comments take time and thought to write, however it only takes one great comment on a large blog to drive a dozen or so unique visits per day.

• Commenting early is very important because most people are not going to read past the first few comments.  Comment placement can be likened to Google placement rank where most searchers rarely go past the first few page results.  If there are 30 comments on a post, most people will only read the top few; so get your comment posted early.

• Commenting on blog posts that are freshly written will usually yield a greater amount of traffic than commenting on a blog post that was posted many months ago.  Most of a blog’s traffic is going to come from loyal followers. Fresh posts are usually viewed by those followers within the first few days of the post. Your comment has a greater chance of being seen by the masses if you comment on freshly written blog posts.

4 techniques to use when commenting on blogs

1. First do a blog search on your niche topic and build a list of 10 -20 different blogs that you think provide quality content that you would like to follow. The more followers the blog has, the better chances you will have a redirecting some of that traffic to your own blog.
2. Grab the RSS feed for those blogs using a RSS reader or a tool such as Comment Sniper. Set the reader or sniper to immediately notify you whenever a new post is made.
3. Review fresh blog posts as early as you possibly can and if you can provide a quality comment that is relevant to the post, then do so. If you cannot add value to the post, do not leave a comment. It’s okay to bypass a post that you do not have a comment for. It is better to not comment than to leave a weak comment.
4. Prior to making comments, get familiar with that particular blog community. Each blog has its own unique style and community character. Make sure you blend in with that community’s style and character before leaving comments.

Tracking the effectiveness of your blog comments

Any activity incorporated into your marketing efforts should provide you with verifiable results. Tracking is a very important activity. It lets you know what efforts are bringing you the best results.

The best way to measure your results is with tracking analytic software. You can install analytic software on your blog for free if you use a tool like Google Analytics. With this software you can monitor from where and how much traffic you are receiving.

Your analytics software should provide you with insight as to which blogs and posts are driving the most traffic back to your site. With this information you will be able to better judge which blogs and subjects produce better results for you. This will help you laser focus your commenting efforts.