I recently noticed a poll over at Site Sketch 101 where Nicholas asks his visitors how they promote their site the most. Currently when writing this 50 percent voted on Commenting. I couldn’t agree more and think this is one of the easiest methods to get backlinks and visitors while branding yourself.
A few weeks ago I told you how to keep track of your comments, but the problem is that people usually spends 2-10 minutes reading a post and then only leave one comment to never return again.
Follow up your old comments
I recommended Delicious because you have a trail where you’ve been. At the end of every week you can use this information and spend one hour visiting your old comments to see if someone answered them. By doing so you may end up writing 3-10 comments on one single post which will help you a lot if you want to qualify for the top 5 commenting list.
In Delicious I usually use three different tags for my comments. C (to show it’s a comment), Check (if I leave a question I want to know the answer on) and last Return (comments there might be a response to).
These comments are also a lot easier to respond since they are asking you a direct question. Even though you may not know the answer on their question you have a reason to leave a new comment.
Do you follow up on posts where you’ve left a comment?
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome idea. I usually bookmark the blog’s I comment frequently on and go back regularly to comment on the blog’s I follow. That way I can check out new posts, replies, and announcements. Bookmarked!
Thank you Seth, I’m glad you liked it. I actually subscribed for your blog a few days ago.
Even I believe Stefan that comment is the best tool for getting traffic and blog promotion. More over if you use comments effectively you can make any website index within few minutes.
I recently launched a new blog and I have not written a single post but due to commenting the website is in search result with 2 page Home and about me…
That’s the power of commenting
Sounds great Harsh. I always write a post on one of my domains to get a new site indexed, but this seems to be a lot easier.
Stephan
You know I have been wondering how to keep track of comments. I mean there are days I go “Now what was that site I left a comment on” . I didn’t even know there was a way to track that. I am really going to look into Delicious.
Just wanted to say thanks for coming back to my site also. Yup another baby. I think this maybe it though. I have 3 boys this could be number 4 or maybe a girl. We will see
Jim
Delicoius is great for this purpose. Download the plugin for Firefox and you’ll be up and running in no time. Again, congratulations for your fourth baby.
Awesome idea. I’ve not used that service much but with the labeling idea to remember and track your comments I really think that it could be useful. Thanks for the good tips.
You’re welcome Nicholas. I highly recommend you to check it out. Another interesting fact is that you’ll have statistics on exactly how many comments you leave every day. Makes you wonder sometimes how much time you actually spend commenting.
I keep track my enabling “notify me of followup comment”
Well, you could use BackType to see where you have left comments. Another thing is that you could subscribe to comments, I know not all sites have that, but most do (even you have it here).
Comments play an important role to build relationships and find new and exciting sites.
You are right George, I actually started to subscribe for comments a bit more after reading the comments for my post about Delicious. Unfortunately as you say, not all blogs use this.
I agree with you on how important comments are. It’s usually the first step to get in touch with a blogger if you don’t have a reason to send them a mail.
That is a cool way to keep track of posts. I usually just subscribe to comments on the posts that I have interest in seeing if someone follows up, and then I usually unsubscribe a few days later, so I don’t keep getting random emails for weeks down the road. I think I will give your method a try and see how it works.
Feel free to return and tell me more about your thoughts then Doug. I guess I’m a bit blinded since I really like this method, so it would be a good idea for some constructive critique and maybe some ideas on what more you can do with it.
Sounds great. I’m not very familiar with Delicious, I should take some time to play around.
Great work, Stephan!
I am agree with you.I’m getting sufficient traffic by commenting on other blogs.Even commenting on other blogs improve PR of each link.
If you want to improve your PR as well, then you need to especially look out for dofollow blogs. The best thing is if you can find a dofollow blog with CommentLuv. Unfortunately a lot of blogs claiming to be dofollow are rarely it.
Comment back on the commenter blog will also give good results. This way you will not forget them and they will not forget you.
This is a good point. But what happens when some people dont comment on every one of your posts? For example, they only comment on the ones that they disagree with you. Do you still remember them, or do you only go back to their sites when they leave comments?
Every time I see a new face I try to visit their site to see what type of articles they are writing. Sometimes I decide to bookmark and subscribe for the blog at once and sometimes I simply leave a comment for show the author I visit him.
I think there’s a better chance of you remembering someone who disagrees with you even though your thoughts of the person may not be positive. If they have value in their posts I subscribe and if they don’t I only visit them when they leave a comment. At the moment I’m subscribing for several hundreds blogs.
Several hundred blogs? Are you serious? How do you get to read all of them? Ive got about 25, I think, and most of the time I only get to visit half of them every day.
At the moment it’s 454 subscriptions. I will probably try to remove some of the in the future, but many of them deliver high quality content. You gave me a great idea both for the book and a post now. Will explain how I can manage to keep it all under control.
That is a lot of blogs to read. How long does it take you to read all of them, if you read a post on every blog?
There is about 400 new posts to read each day and it takes me approximately two hours to go throw them all. Depending on how many comments I leave it sometimes take my an additional hour. I usually do it at the end of the day when I’m fed up with work because you do not have to concentrate as much. If I find a truly amazing post I bookmark it to read when I am more refreshed.
Commenting is always good, only if the comments you are leaving are not worthless. I have seen too many people leaving comments in hopes of getting a return visit by other bloggers. You should write a post about how people should not be leaving random comments. There are too many comments that do not pretain at all to the article, people leave comments for backlinks and whatnot…
I agree with you Jason. Personally I really dislike the classic “good post” or “keep up the good work”. I tend do start with this if I really like the post and then I build up with reasons to why I like it or what the author can do to improve it.
I’m actually writing a long eBook right now about everything you need to know about leaving and receiving quality comments. I have topics for roughly 30-40 pages at the moment, so it will most certainly contain some valuable information.
Delicious is a great idea, and I am ready to try it. I usually subscribe to comments, but then I get so many emails from one post on a popular blog that I unsubscribe in a day or so – and am spending too much time on each blog I do this for. Anything that would help me to streamline my efforts to comment and follow up for responses would be great – so Delicious may be it. Thanks!
You’re welcome Christie. Personally I think it’s a life saver.
Its a cool idea. I didn’t get the return tag usage though. Do oyu tag a post with return after revisiting the site and seeing that someone replied to your comment?
If I find the slightest chance someone will reply my comment I tag it with Return the first time I visit. After a few days I can then go back to all of the sites where I added a Return-tag and see if there is a new comment waiting for me. If not, I will keep the tag. If I got the answer I was looking for I remove the Return-tag.
it has been a long time since the last time I logon to Delicious. Need to get my password back. Thanks stefan
That is a great idea about Delicious. What I usually do is if I like the site it goes into a category in my Google reader. I need to look around at Delicious more. Greg Ellison
If I find a blog useful I also subscribe for it in Google Reader. But it would be great if Google Reader could have subtags because it get a bit difficult to organize them sometimes.
Since the day I found Blog Engage, I learned how to make useful comments on blogs and I usually copy the url of those comments and I go back a day or two just to check if I need to update my comment or reply to someone.
Talking of Delicious…I think I need to creat an account there.
Thanks Stefan for the advice.
Do you save this URL in a simple text document or where do you save it? It is basically a older version of using Delicious.
I have no idea about delicious even though i have booked few links. Usually i used Digg and facebook. After reading your post i will go again to taste delicious
Nice post. Somehow, I felt guilty about this post. By the way, how to check if a blog has follow or do folllow comment tag? I think mine is do follow because I can see that the comments sometimes appear in search engine results.
Your blog is unfortunately nofollow. Your question would be a great post so I will hopefully publish it later this week.
I really only started getting on the comment train about six months ago, keeping track of them is hard (reading your other post in a minute), but my blog has exploded with comments over the last 90 days.
I constantly follow up on all comments left on my blog and recently really started subscribing to comments so I could go back and re-visit articles I enjoy.
I liek Site Sketch, left a bunch of comments there for a while but never really saw a network growing there for me, I visit it once and a while now.
Site Sketch is still new, so hopefully you will get more attention by commenting there. Do you have any more blog to recommend when it comes to growing your network? I’m constantly looking for new blogs.