Are You Commenting Wrong?

Can you comment in the wrong manner even if you do not spam? Maybe not wrong, but unproductive. Most people visit blogs here and there and comment one day, then visit off somewhere else another day. This is the drive-by approach to commenting. There is a better way, though. The community way.

Focus your energy on building a community with yourself as the hub and all the other blogs in your niche as the spokes. This way takes longer, but ultimately delivers a much better result. There are five phases to this approach. First, identify the other blogs in your niche. Second, become a familiar face around them. Third, attempt to get as many of them as possible to install the CommentLuv plugin . Fourth, visit these blogs on a frequent basis and leave pertinent comments. Five, reap the benefits of community versus drive-by commenting.

Find your Niche

The first part is as simple as running a Google search on your niche term. For example, my niche is vegetable gardening. That returns a huge number of responses, and the top ones are not blogs but publishers like eHow.com, Suite101.com, and the such. However, I can specify blogs by clicking that term on the side of the Google results page. That is much better. Real blogs I can comment on. Now, specify 50 results per page. At the bottom of the page, you can funnel this search feed into Google Reader or whatever you use to read RSS or Atom files. This is your data source for the next phase of building your community.

Pick the right blogs

Now, each day pick ten blogs to explore. Some are easily discarded as little more than one page billboards. The others, however, have good content and are interesting to read. Do not be concerned if traffic is low. Quality is the key. Visit the quality sites daily. Read their posts. Comment, but only if you can add quality to the conversation. Whatever you do, no advertising! This is crucial. The goal is to become a familiar face that people accept as someone who comments only when they are adding something. If the site is CommentLuv enabled, it is okay to leave a link to a pertinent post, but if they do

not have ComLuv, do not leave one in your comment. It makes you sound like you are just interested in traffic, not community.

Work towards advertising

Finally, in the third phase, you can work towards advertising. By now, you should be a familiar face and the blog writer is probably visiting your blog. If they do not have ComLuv installed on their blog, approach them and tell them you think they would be able to deliver better information to your readers when they comment if they had ComLuv installed, so they could pick which of their most recent posts was most germane to the topic. Your readers would then have an easy way to find a relevant post by following the link. This would also increase that blog’s traffic, so everyone wins. Offer to assist them in getting set up with the ComLuv Network and figuring out how to use it.

Why you should have a group of blogs?

By now, you should have a group of blogs that you read every day containing good quality content in your niche. You may have added new ones you discovered during the first few phases. That is fine, and you can add new ones as you come across emerging stars in your niche. When you can add something to the conversation taking place at each blog, leave a comment with a ComLuv link to your most pertinent post on the subject. If you do not have anything useful to add, do not leave a comment that day. Avoid “always” saying something, even when you have something to say. The goal is conversation, not monologue.

Leave targeted links without seeming spammy

A funny thing will start to happen as you make comments, leave links, and receive comments with links. All of the core blogs involved will start to rise in the rankings, gain more authority in the area, and get more traffic from searches. As you continue your efforts, for you can never really rest on your laurels unless you want stickers in your backside, you will continue to add a few blogs, a few blogs will fade away, and you will still be the hub of your community. ComLuv is critical to this effort as it allows you to leave targeted links without seeming spammy. So, get commenting!

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