As I’m reading through my Bloglines today, I see that “comments” is the post flavor of the week. So what’s that all about?

Bloggers (Including myself) are always very concerned with how to increase quality blog comments. Some of the posts I’ve read are on how to increase comments, while another is on how be successful at leaving comments…

How to Attract Comments on Your Blog is written by Sarah over at Bluejar.com and is an excellent turtorial on getting comments. Sarah’s blog is only 3 months old and she has over a 1000 comments on 100 posts. That’s nothing to sneeze at. How is she able to get so many comments? Check out her post, but I think the main reason is that Sarah spends much time commenting herself. Commenting on other blogs is a great way to get new readers to your site, as well as getting them to comment back to you.

Commenting by Monika at Blog Web2.0 talks about how it is just good business to reply to comments on your blog, and as often as you can go and visit the blog that left you the comment in the first place. One of her pet peeve’s is when the “gurus” lose sight of keeping in touch with their readers.

How to ACTUALLY get Blog Comments written by SBJ at Make Money Online with SnowBoardJohn takes a totally different approach to getting comments.

He says you need to understand that people do what they do because of social pressure. When someone leaves a blog comment it’s like speaking up in a crowd and that makes some people VERY uncomfortable. What you need to do is appeal to their core values. So that in fact NOT leaving a blog comment would bring them more grief than actually leaving a blog comment. A very interesting read.

Successful Commenting Starts Here is a guest post written by Snoskred on OneMansGoal.com tells about how last year she made a point to comment on up to 100 different blogs/day when she was involved with National Blog Posting Month last year. She says her traffic and subscribers went through the roof. But it’s a matter of what you write in the comment that makes a difference. Check out what she has to say about it.

Challenging yourself to post a certain number of comments on a certain number of blogs each day is a great way to get started. Snoskred has created a group if you’re interested in doing something like this during NaBloPoMo. The group is Commenting Challenge, and you can join by clicking the link.

These blogs have served up some great ideas and information. In my post What Makes you Leave a Blog Comment, I talked about the reasons for getting and giving comments. I do think the most important reason is the sense of community that is created when you are active with commenting.

I find that for myself commenting, though very important, is one of the first things that falls away when I’m having a really busy week. For instance these past few weeks have been super busy in my personal life with my home renovation. I have had very little time online and so when I actually do get time to sit and work the first thing that I try to do is get a few posts out.

When this happens commenting and being involved on the social networking sites are the two things that I seem to let slide. And that really is not good as these are the two things that will increase my blog readers and community the most.

I’ve read about people outsourcing comments. I’m not sure what I think of this. I can see the benefit to it, but I think comments are a personal thing done by the blogger. Outsourcing posts or getting guest bloggers free up time may a better solution.

Joining that commenting group in November might just be a way to keep me on track with my comments. The message that I’m getting through all of this information is that is the best way to build your blog and your community.

UPDATE: I just visited my friend Alex’s blog How to Spot-er.com.  He posted a great article this morning with a bunch of cool comment plugins.  I’ve already downloaded 3 of them. Check it out: Love Your Commentors and Be Rewarded 

Thoughts you’d like to share?

Expect the Best,

blog comments, Blogging, comment challenge, community, give kudos, networking, relationship, Social Networking, Web 2.0

Stumble it!

If you enjoyed this entry, be sure to Subscribe to my RSS Feed

(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Share This  | | Email This Post  |  Print It  |  Subscribe!
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 18th, 2007 at 5:38 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.