How to Write Better Blog Comments
Blog commenting is a great way to grow your reach, personal brand and attract new audiences to your web site. The problem with blog commenting is that so many people are doing it wrong. It’s also something that should not be outsourced or taken lightly, as it can quickly come back and make you look desperate and foolish in the process.
The secrets to writing killer blog comments and getting the attention you are looking for in all about how you pursue blog commenting. Your comments need to provide value, you need to be commenting on the right sites and have all the right aspects of a killer comment. I’m going to break down each of these for you now.
Before we jump into the best blog commenting practices, here is the perfect example of a quality blog comment.
7 Tips for Writing Better Blog Comments
Use Your Real Name
This one is just common sense. If you want to get more promotion for your personal brand or blog, you should be using your real name. The problem is that many people are using the keywords and phrases they are trying to rank for. Leaving a comment with the name “low cost hosting” or “money forex trading” not only looks bad, but it’s a clear sign of a spammy comment that will surely be deleted.
Use a Real Profile Picture
Almost as annoying as seeing a new comment on your blog with a keyword as the name, is seeing a comment without a picture. Not only does it look bad on your blog, but once again it shows the comment is potentially spam as their isn’t an authority or real person behind it.
Link to Your Site, Blog or Social Profile
When you post a comment on a blog you have the options to add in your Name, Email and URL. These are the three components to making a great first impression with your comment. If any of them are missing or not real, you are already destined for failure. Since the “link” is why most people are leaving comments on blogs in the first place, if they aren’t a good link, they should be deleted. A good link is considered a link that matches with your name and profile picture. Linking to a spammy blog that is clearly re-hashed content and trying to make a quick buck is not a good URL to be used for blog commenting.
Read the Damn Post!
Another clear sign of a comment that is garbage is when it really has nothing to do with the post. I see comments all the time with the same generic text that says “I thank you for your time in writing this post and it will surely help everyone out”. This is garbage. While it’s a complement to what you wrote, it’s most likely copy and pasted onto hundreds of blogs and just left to get a link back to someone’s site.
Provide Real Value Within Your Comment
When you actually read the post content you are commenting on, you can actually provide value in your comment. Comments like “great article” and “good stuff, thanks!” are complete garbage and are always going to get deleted. When commenting on blogs you need to actually provide value. Pretend you are talking with a person in real life. Are they going to find any value in what you just wrote to leave as a comment on a site?
Respond to Other Comments
An excellent way to get more people talking on your blog is to start replying to other comments on your site. It’s also a great way to increase the number of comments on your site. No one likes a blog that has no discussion, and the more comments on your blog, the more motivation it gives other readers to start leaving comments.
Early Comments Get the Most Reads
An extra tip for getting the most out of your blog commenting is to try and leave the first comment on new blog posts. The first comments left on a blog are always read first and get the most attention. This attention isn’t only from the person who wrote the post, but also from everyone reading the comments as well. It’s tough to be the first person to write comments on a lot of blogs, but it’s definitely something worth trying.
The next time you are leaving a comment on a blog, ask yourself if you are really providing value and growing your personal brand/business… or just leaving another spammy comment that is sure to end up in the trash?
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Great topic Idea. I read a lot of blogs but rarely (if ever) leave a comment. Thanks for sharing.
Good tips Zac was this a good blog comment? lol jk in all seriousness it is almost amusing how lazy some people are for example putting comments like great post I'll be back or something cheesy like that.
Take the time to read the blog post, add something relevant that is related to the post you just read, and maybe you will get a little extra traffic from your efforts instead of your blog comments being marked as spam.
Pretty easy principle it amazes me how lazy some people are nowadays.
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These are all good points. It really irritates me when someone doesn't actually read my post. I think they read the title and maybe a few sentences or something. Part of the comment will make sense, but not entirely. I don't know why it is so difficult to take just a couple of minutes writing a comment that shows they read it. I guess two minutes is too much to ask, or people are very lazy. I don't know maybe I just spend more time on this than the average person when I comment myself somewhere.
My recent post When Commenting On Blogs Use Your Real Name
Very often, Zac, I'll leave it a few minutes after I've read a post before I return to make a comment. That way, I tend to make a more considered and insightful contribution.
What I hate is when people say 'Great tips Kevin. I'm going to implement them on my website right now.'
But you know damn well they won't.
These people are clearly far too lazy to write anything useful in a comment on your blog. So it's hardly likely they'll go to the extra effort of implementing those tips you just gave them.
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That last tip is an interesting one. Sometimes I visit sites where the newest comment is on top, and the first is down at the bottom far out of view. Is this necessarily a rule of thumb? Or is this just most blogs?
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I thank you for your time in writing this post and it will surely help everyone out!
LOL, just kidding 😉
I agree that commenting has become more of a "scheme" is recent years and it helps no one! The more people abuse the system the more important it is to actually post legitimate comments that actually ADD to the conversation.
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I would like add some more points on this not only commenting earlier drives more eyeballs but also if you write long enough it will bring much larger hits as compared to those with short comments and also it builds up trust among the readers of that blog which thus increase your readership too.
While commenting on problogger on regular basis have improved my blog readership upto 25%.
Commenting has become more and more spammy nowadays in one of my blog i receive 300+ spam comments which i have to delete each month.
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Great article, Zac. I have a feeling you were trying to be clever so we comment. Well, it looks like it worked. Now I have to ask you a question, was this a great comment? 😛
All joking aside, commenting on my blog is a touchy subject. As I don't have the readership that I'd enjoy, it's hard to pinpoint how commenting truly works on my blog. However, I have noticed that when I reply to my readers, they get a sense of acknowledgement and they tend to come back for more. I do my best to reply to every single person who comments. Not because I want to look nice, but because I feel that I need to give back as they've taken the time to comment. It just feels right.
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Hello Zac,
Its a pity some of the visitors to my blog have not read your great post! I get really pleased when someone takes the time to read and make a sensible comment on my blog.
I also get frustrated by the deluge of spam comments which I keep deleting. I do sometimes wonder if any blog owner actually publishes these junk entries to make the amount of spam comments worthwhile. Surely no one can really want the gibberish I see coming inbound to me published on their blogs?
Regards.
Steve
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For sure I will do improvement the way I used to do commenting. Helped me lot to upgrade my knowledge.
Wow, Thanks Zac. I was going to do just what you said not to do. I am new to this game and someone told me to start commenting on blog post to get some traffic. They said just leave your link. Their instructions were nowhere as good as yours. Thanks tons.
My favorite part is read the damn post! I can’t even tell you how many people post that text on the sites I work on.