14 Ways to Highlight Your Comments Through the Blogosphere

Leaving relevant and interesting comments is one of the best ways to bring traffic to your site and connect with other bloggers in your niche.

It is also a great way to demonstrate to the readers your experience in a particular field, based upon something concrete.

However, it is not always so easy to leave bright and useful comments, especially if you do not want to be forgotten after few seconds.

Sometimes you may lose authentic golden opportunities. In other words the possibility to get noticed and stand out from all the comments below a popular article with high traffic.

These twelve points will help you paste your comments in the reader’s mind better than glue.

1. Use Your Name

Trivial? Not so much, believe me.

Although for some it might seem a good technique to comment using as name the keywords related to their blogs, there is no denying that people always tend to give greater confidence to real names.

Then you need to consider that will all the SPAM comments a popular blog receive everyday, you are more likely to get your comment trashed then approved, if you want to use keywords in replacement of your real name.

2. Use a Gravatar

Getting an effective avatar, which present yourself to the blogosphere is something you must have.

First, because this is something that, like it or not, will be associated with your name and your comments for a long time.

And second because with services such as Gravatar.com is now very easy to upload your most representative image and see it associated with your comments all around the web.

3. Do not Be Selfish

When you leave a comment, try to do it as much as possible disinterested.

Avoid to comment on other people’s blogs, just to push each of your article in the hope of picking up a handful of new readers every day.

Promote your blog posts only when you are sure that they can add something useful to the discussion. There is nothing worse than clicking on a link of a (apparently) passionate commenter and being in front of a handful of lines already seen, perhaps copied or absolutely useless.

4. Enter Relevant Links

On the other hand, do not be stingy with resources that can add value to the discussion. One or two links of note (including your own) may stimulate the interest of other readers, above all if they are struggling with a long string of purely textual comments.

Keep in mind that on the web you are what you write and you are what you propose.

If you really want your comments stand out among all the others, you need to offer really good material. Something more than the classic “Nice post, thanks for sharing”.

5. Remember the Formatting

Bold, italics or links help you structuring your comment, providing visual anchors, able to lighten the conversation.

Most of the HTML formatting that you need can be learned in a matter of minutes and, after all, you always need it when blogging.

In many cases within the comment form, you may find a ready visual editor that you can use to compose your advanced comment as if it was in your favorite text editor.

6. Use the Lists

In particular, use the lists to concentrate more content in less space and optimize your comment.

A

good list can be as exhaustive as several dense paragraphs. And you can write it faster, as well readers will do.

7 . Be a Grammar Friend

Please, please, please, try to use good grammar!

If you are one of those like me who is not an English native speaker, it can be very difficult to write a proper language, but at least try to force yourself to achieve this goal. And remember that you will improve with time!

If you really want someone to be interested in you because of the comments you leave around the blogosphere, take your time to leave a well written comment ( you can install a spell checker in your browser).

Remember to proofread your comment, before clicking the “Publish” button.

8 . Be constructive

Who said that the interesting comments must necessarily be complacent?

I appreciate the readers who can constructively criticize what they read. A good criticism is what you need to relieve the mass of the “automatic commentators” usually based on standard phrases.

Above all, constructive criticism puts you in a position to really unleash your knowledge about the topic.

9. Use the Imperfections

The definitive and perfect article does not exist.

Indeed, any post is a great way to stimulate discussion among the readers. Grasp the questions and meet the points left (deliberately?) opened by the author is a good way to prove to be entered into the heart of the argument instead of pressing the“publish” button almost as a reflex, leaving an insignificant comment.

10. Solve a Problem

In order to attract the attention of whoever is reading, you have to be ready to solve other people’s problems. And there’s not need to bother with pages and pages of reflections in response to another comment, but rather be able to be present with a good solution in your pocket.

Do not overlook something so small, because it is the rule on which is based half of the entire internet.

And then, think about it. It may happen that the article you commented on, will be one day at the top of the search engines page results and with a little luck, your short answer may be placed under the eyes of many, many other readers.

11. Expand the Discussion

The discussion does not take off… Is everything being told?

I bet instead you still have something to explain, a detail to be added or just an experience to share.

May be you can write something off-topic. Well, you know that this is gold for both you and the owner of the blog. The classic win-win situation: the users who write the comments and the readers who interact within the discussion.

12. Be the First One

Especially on blogs with a high frequency of comments, being the first on the post of the day could guarantee you a good chance to be noticed.

The good news is that it actually seems to work. If you are between the first comments, you almost certainly receive incoming traffic unless you have written rubbish.

The bad news is that it’s not exactly an activity that you can plan, not every bloggers follow a regular publication. Tip : subscribe to the RSS-Feeds of these popular blogs!

13. Be Consistent

Do you really want to be noticed for the comments you leave on a blog?

Begin to become a regular reader and interact consistently with its audience.

You can give a contribution and begin to be part of that community that everyone is looking to build every day in their blogs.

14. Do not Take Yourself Too Seriously!

Lastly, do not try to take care of every detail until you feel exhausted, in order to appear authoritative, expert or guru in your niche.

You should comment only when you have something to say and do it in a natural, spontaneous and may be ironic way.

What do you think? Which other methods are you using to highlight your comments?

Image courtesy of Master isolated images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net