Blog commenting is something that’s been on my mind lately, and today I came across a blog post by James Mowery on the subject. Evidently, blog commenting is a hotly debated topic these days.
I have a mixed opinion of it.
When is blog commenting good, in my opinion?
Yes, commenting on blogs is a great way to bring people back to your own site when you do it in a particular way (leading to a specific post and not the blog in general).
Blog commenting is good when you find and comment on relevant blogs (meaning blogs your audience would also benefit from) It’s a good practice, if you have time (which…who does?) to post your own fresh content daily and then take that link and put it as the website link when you comment on 5 relevant blog posts (in your niche).
Piddledy-diddledy work that is better left to someone else. As a business owner, you need to focus on reaching your goals, serving your customers, creating content, marketing, etc.
It’s also great to comment when you find something you like on a blog and chime in to join the conversation.
Beware the Bad Blog Commenting Bots
because blog commenting is tedious enough to make an entrepreneur weep, business owners who want links leading back to their blogs are stooping to automation used in an extremely irritating manner to get linkbacks to their own blogs.
However, there are so many “bots” – meaning automated blog commenting systems, that I get extremely frustrated with the whole thing. People who want to comment on lots of blogs tend to write these horrid generalized “say nothing” comments that could apply to anything at all.
I can’t tell you how annoying it is to get spammy comments like “that was an interesting article on this topic and I will be back to your blog.” This by someone who hasn’t even seen my blog and with a website that’s about real estate, pills or… unmentionables.
I call it link bait whoring. This happens when someone crafts a generalized says-nothing-much comment like the one mentioned above plus a direct link to a blog post and slams it across the blogosphere, irrespective of whether it’s posting to a relevant blog or not
Because of this practice, those of us truly serving our audience have to go to ridiculous measures to keep out the spammy bots.
I’ve got better things to do with my time! And so have you. But such it is.
I am so incredibly grateful for Akismet! That keeps it down to a dull roar, but I had to put a simple captcha on comments just to cause some of the automated bot talk to go away. Not a perfect solution, but better than Akismet alone.
Other Opinions on blog Commenting
here’s a bit from James Mowery’s post in which he shares comments from Robert Scoble, who said, “Comments are dead.”:
Scoble is most likely of this opinion because of his ability to generate plenty of conversation on services like Twitter and, most recently, FriendFeed. Other services like Disqus and Intense Debate offer third-party solutions to commenting on your blog, but FriendFeed could also serve as commenting service to anyone’s blog (or any other posted items) as well.[2. FriendFeed offers the ability for users to comment on items posted on a FriendFeed account. For example, when I complete this article, a notification will be sent to my FriendFeed friends. My friends on FriendFeed will be able to comment on that item if they please.] However, one must question if this is a viable option for those of us without hundreds of thousands of followers.
Here are some of James Mowery’s own views in the same post:
Blog readership desires new and effective ways to manage and post their comments. A service like Disqus is great for this because a user doesn’t have to sign up for various blogs to leave comments, but if a particular blog or site does not utilize the Disqus service, that user is back to square one.
To sum this up, commenting on blogs will continue to increase in popularity—Scoble was just being Scoble.[3. The best bloggers are those who can make themselves sound like geniuses but cover their ass if need be. I don't appreciate this form of blogging, but you do what you got to do
Social Media Revolutionizes Commenting
There truly can be plenty of commenting in various places as mentioned above. Remember, every post on Twitter is its own webpage, and one of the ways to get a good “bang” out of Twitter is talking about/responding to stuff about your topic using the keywords people are searching.
People are expected to be interactive these days. One of my friends just can't stand Twitter, reviews, commenting and all of it. It drives her nuts. She'll run straight to movie reviews on Rotten Tomatoes to help her decide what to see, but don't ever expect her to add one herself, to tweet or use Facebook! Anyone else notice a contradiction there? or is it just me?
I've had an occasional comment from FriendFeed, and I have to admit that sometimes I wonder if people don't have something better to do than sit around reading other people's feeds all day.
Changing the Way We Interact
Microblogs, review sites, the ability to add product reviews on sites such as Amazon and HSN, the Facebook Like Pages are all evidence that commenting of one form or another is here to stay.
I get more blog comments via my Facebook or Twitter links than I typically do on my blog.
And I have to tell you that I get all kinds of interesting and high-profile people reaching out to me because of the blog. So, comments or no, I'd say it's working!
Commenting may be changing, but there is no doubt whatsoever that interaction, sharing reviews, views, opinions and comments, is here to stay.
Is blog commenting going the way of the dinosaurs?
I don't see it happening. I Do wish real live people who actually are reading the blog would comment rather than link bait whoring bloggers using bots.
Blogging is GROWING
The question of whether comments are dead or alive leads to the question about the state of blogging itself. Is blogging in danger of extinction?
NO!
take a look at the following:
Hubspot Blog reports this news about businesses who blog. and why would they blog if they didn't get results like this?
A study of 2,300 HubSpot customers revealed that businesses that blog witness their monthly leads rise by 126% more than those who don't. Read more:
CyberJournalism.net quotes Technorati stats about the blogging explosion in this post:
Here is Technorati's latest State of the blogosphere report.
A few highlights:
• On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog
• The blogosphere is doubling about once every 6 and a half months
• About 175,000 new weblogs are created each day
• There are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day
about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
And Search Engine Journal talks about the latest Technorati State of the Blogosphere report:.
All of the stats are courtesy of “2009 State of the Blogosphere by Technorati”
- More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
- 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
- Two-thirds of Bloggers are male (c’mon ladies, start Blogging!)
- One in four has an annual household income of $100K+
- Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
- 68% have been blogging for two years or more
- 86% have been blogging for at least a year
- 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their blog
- 72% say they blog in order to share their expertise.
- 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
- 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
- 57% say that their future plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year olds).
- Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed Bloggers are blogging as much as or more than ever (73%, 76% and 80%, respectively), while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.
- 15% of Bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
- One in five Bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
- The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
- The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
- 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form of multimedia.
- Bloggers participate in an average of 5 activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
- Read more:
Long live the blog!
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- Social Media Playbook: Blog or Twitter or Facebook? Or...? (converstations.com)
- The Decline and Fall of Robert Scoble [Blogging For Dollars] (gawker.com)
- My6Sense & The Geek Who Rode His Blog to the Edge of the World (readwriteweb.com)
- The FriendFeed Orgasm And Why It Is Off The Mark | David Risley … (davidrisley.com)
- 4 reviews of FriendFeed (rateitall.com)
- Distribution Points for Your Blog (e1evation.com)
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