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The Secret Power of Blog Comments
By dana | September 19, 2007
I’ve been thinking about comments a lot lately. I read a lot from bloggers about comments. Many of those posts cover:
- Why you should comment
- Why you should respond to comments
- Why you should or shouldn’t allow comments with or without subscribing
- Whether you should or shouldn’t have the no-follow on comments
In the past week or so, I’ve discovered a different valuable aspect to comments. I am pleased to say that I have been receiving a nice amount recently. I’ve found a lot of new friends and blogs in communicating with my commenters. But what is the secret power I’ve discovered?
Having a growing base of great readers and commenters is motivating me to try to write better posts!
I really respect my readers and knowing that they’re there, reading and will be responding to what I write is forcing me to really think about the quality of my posts and what I’m offering to them. Not that I didn’t try to offer great posts before, of course I did. But the addition of a loyal readership has really upped the ante in my mind. I don’t want to let you all down!
So thank you to all that have commented, subscribed or will comment in the future. And do me a favor, go comment on someone’s blog right now…doesn’t have to be mine! Just keep the secret motivational power of the blog community going, and I think the quality of the blogosphere will keep climbing!
Here’s a few of the posts about comments that I’ve read lately (I’m sure there are more, but these are what I had marked in one way or another):
- The Art of Responding to Comments on Your Blog from Shaun Low
- Drive Traffic By Commenting First from SiteFever
- How Should We Moderate Comments On Our Company Blog from CorpBlawg
- Manage Time By Sorting Your Blog Comments In Six Ways from the Reader Appreciation Project
Other Stuff You Might Like:
September 19th, 2007 at 2:17 pm
commenting is one of the best way to get highly targeted traffic to your website. it’s also the easiest way to get free traffic. excellent post dana
!!
September 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Very true Shaun. Comments bring ridiculously well-targeted visitors!
September 19th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
I agree totally.
Without comments readers are just IPs in SiteMeter. With comments they are friends and fans and those are whay make it worthwhile.
September 19th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Well said Ad Tracker!
September 19th, 2007 at 7:28 pm
Can’t leave without commenting after that post, can I?
September 19th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
Well Dana it helps a lot that you’re approachable and your writing style is very personable(?). Thanks for your comments as well
Oh, just 1 post today?
September 19th, 2007 at 9:26 pm
Thanks and very funny
back at ya!
September 19th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Suzi, Sorry I got ahead of myself in replying to comments. I promise I’m not ignoring you! Looks like you caught on to my evil comment getting plan
Actually, I kind of figured I wouldn’t get any comments on this one…you know, when you expect a lot, you don’t get any and when you write a silly little post that you doubt anyone will read, you get tons!
September 20th, 2007 at 12:47 pm
Shaun speaks truth. Apart from that, great post. Knowing you have readers leaving comments interested in what you say does much for improving post quality. If you think no one will read this, it won’t matter as much what you put into it, but if you know people are reading and gleaning information, it’s going to motivate you to put more into it and strive to benefit your readers.
September 20th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
I ran my blog for 13 months before I figured out that removing the sign up requirement and adding the usual anti-spam stuff would be the best way for me to attract comments.
From getting one comment every 5 or 6 articles to getting plenty of comments on almost every article has been the big difference.
I wish I knew all of that when I first started!
September 21st, 2007 at 1:39 am
@Alfred Thanks. That’s what I’ve been finding.
@Matt I hear you! Life would be a lot simpler making people register to comment…but I think it would also be a lot lonelier too
October 26th, 2007 at 6:02 am
This is a great post man whenever i visit a blog i learn something new for my blog