Commenting Is Not Only About Traffic

Posted on November 7, 2007 - Filed Under Blog Tips

The blogosphere has been abuzz with quite a flurry of news lately, starting with Google slapping a PageRank penalty to blogs selling paid links, to the recent blooper with Google Feedfetcher that caused widespread alarm among bloggers who thought 50% of their subscribers had packed up and left. This elicited a number of responses from A-list bloggers and Feedburner:

Feedburner Subscriber Counters - A Glitch? (Problogger, 50 comments)
How I Lost 4,993 Subscribers Overnight (John Chow, 60 comments)
Saturday Subscriber Count Drop (Feedburner, 34 comments)

The dust seems to have settled today, and attention has veered from Google news to center around the hot topic of using a comment strategy to drive traffic to blogs. It all started when Caroline Middlebrook posted Stats and Analysis for ‘07 and Podcast 2 where she reported that 673 of targetted traffic were gained from blogs that she actively comments on. The breakdown of blogs who had sent her traffic include:

This created a stir in the blogosphere, and A-list bloggers like Darren Rowse (Problogger) promptly followed with a post on 11 Tips For Getting Your Comments Noticed on A Popular Blog and Skellie (Skelliewag) suggesting that Caroline should pitch Darren for a guest post on her unique and effective strategy.

This post however, takes a different angle of what commenting can do. While the preoccupation with traffic is an understandable one, what are other uses and benefits leaving comments can have?

1. Provide Valuable Feedback. While readers elbow each other to leave the first comment on a post by an A-list blogger and to attain the status of a Top Commentator, blog owners generally do care about receiving feedback from their audience. They are interested to know their articles have scored with readers or have missed valuable pointers, and what readers’ thoughts are on a particular post, topic or issue.

2. Create a Sense of Community. It is every blogger’s wish that their posts will evoke a response from the readership community to generate intelligent exchange. This sense of community empowers readers to make comments that are thoughtful and passionate, and can add depth and perspective that is invaluable.

3. Content for Future Posts. This is self-explanatory, and both Darren and Skellie publicly share that they do get ideas for posts from reading comments from readers.

4. Targeted Network. While friends from social networks can send you large amounts of traffic, networking via fellow commentators can actually be more valuable and rewarding. Firstly, you are reaching out to a targeted and discerning audience who is probably blogging in the same field as you. This can open future opportunities for guest blogging or for reviewing each others’ sites (most commentators will own a blog that has some level of influence over the same demography of readers as yours).

5. One for the C-list. Commenting on C-list blogs present a great opportunity for you to influence the quality and direction of their content. C-list bloggers may be experimenting with different writing styles, trying to gauge what type of content readers are interested in, and getting creative on how they present their information. They will never know what they are doing wrong or right unless readers take the time to leave comments with constructive feedback. You never know if your comments could contribute to a C-list blogger becoming the next John Chow or Darren Rowse!

From whatever angle you see it, commenting is the next best thing to happen to the blogosphere apart from blogging itself. So make sure you install the comment plugin and turn it on. If you are afraid of comment spam, activate your Akismet plugin. Don’t miss out on the value of blogger-reader interaction, and the potential commenting has in the development of your blog.

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Comments

718 Responses to “Commenting Is Not Only About Traffic”

Caroline Middlebrook on November 7th, 2007 7:19 am

Thanks very much for the mention Ivy. Another benefit for me is that I have got to know quite a few of the bloggers of the blogs that I comment on and it makes me feel like a part of their community.

Also, it has indeed brought me additional exposure in terms of the recognition that I have had from the the bloggers who have gone on to talk about me in the last week. This has led to even more subscribers which is very nice.

I think commenting is great for all concerned

Ivy on November 7th, 2007 8:15 pm

Caroline - I absolutely agree. One of the benefits of commenting on blogs instead of posting articles to Digg is that you get to know the people who comment at your site personally and vice versa. I have noticed that visitors who come to your blog because of your comments on another blog are more likely to sign up as a subscriber than via social networks.

For example, before my articles got discovered by StumbleUpon, I averaged between 6-8 visits a day from referred sites where I commented at (I’m far from being an active commentator at this stage). Out of that 6-8 visits, 2 will subscribe to my blog.

This week, a couple of my articles got Stumbled, leading to over 300-400 visits from StumbleUpon alone. However, I had only 1 subscription there. Either my feedburner’s broke, or the demographics for StumbleUpon users are vastly different from my target audience.

Ben Barden on November 19th, 2007 6:46 am

Ivy - I agree! Not naming names, but I see a lot of people who comment just to get their name on someone else’s blog. I don’t usually comment unless I have something to say.

As for StumbleUpon, it does seem to be a lot harder to keep people on your site if they come from SU than if they clicked from another blog. At least that’s what I’ve found with SU. It’s good to get a specific blog entry out there, but SU users don’t usually click elsewhere on your site. Most of the time they just move on.

Ivy on November 19th, 2007 11:13 am

Yes, I have seen some people you have described at the big blogs. Which reminds me that it is time I thought about a comment policy. Jamie Harrop has a good one I think.

Its true that SU visitors rarely go past the first page. Which leads me to think it is important to form relationships in specific groups that we stumble in, so that the readers we get are writing in the same niche as us. That way, we would have more chances of converting them to subscribers.

An Analysis of Posts Loved By StumbleUpon Users | Marketing Tips For Business Success Through Blogging on November 28th, 2007 1:23 am

[…] Commenting is Not Only About Traffic was written as a reaction to the foray of articles on how commentating on other blogs can gain you traffic when there was so much more to commentating. It was published on Nov 7 and got stumbled simultaneously with “StumbleUpon Sent Me 149 Readers in One Day” with 1 review and 3 votes. […]