What’s The Purpose of Blog Comments?

I have several distinct goals when it comes to leaving comments on other peoples blogs. They are:

1. Grab the attention of the readers
2. Grab the attention of the blogger
3. Develop my personal brand
4. Create some backlinks

It’s quite amazing that blog commenting can do so much really! But something I noticed was that each of those goals requires a slightly different strategy.

Grab the Attention of the Readers

The primary purpose of blog commenting is to gain new readers by enticing readers of the target blog to my own. I believe there are three crucial factors to achieving this:

1. Quality of the comment - ‘great post’ is not going to get a click
2. Being an early commenter - not many people read the 50th comment
3. Commenting on current posts - activity is usually highest on a fresh post

To achieve these things, I need to strive to be one of the first people to comment on a post. Success here is largely a matter of geography. I am based in the UK so many of the high-traffic US blogs such as John Chow are published when I am asleep. By the time I see the posts, there are already many comments. There’s not a lot I can do about this. However it has allowed me to be an early commenter on Australian blogs for the same reason. So it’s all swings and roundabouts - no matter where you live, there will be some blogs you can comment on early, and others you can’t. Just make the most of the ones you can and don’t sweat the others.

Grab The Attention of the Blogger

On the flip side, timing has no relevance when it comes to attracting the attention of the blogger because most bloggers will read all comments, no matter how far down in the list they are, and no matter how old the post. This is mainly a consideration when I decide to check out a new blog. I will get the last 20 or 30 posts and work through them, leaving comments where appropriate. The readers probably won’t see any of these but the blogger will and he or she will suddenly see my name pop up in his comment list several times. If they are anything like me, they’ll click through to see who this new active commenter is. Attention grabbed!

Develop my Personal Brand

My brand is my name, and I suppose my picture. The way to reinforce my brand is simply to be everywhere! That way, people start to recognise the name and human curiosity may eventually result in a click through. Of course, being everywhere is very time consuming and that is where the Top Commentator plugins come in very useful. I have found that the majority of blogs that use the TC plugin reset it monthly. As long as I keep myself on that list, my name (and link) stays there for a whole month. The higher up I am on the list, the better it looks. So, when checking out a new blog for the first time, I’ll have a look at their plugin and determine just how many comments I would have to leave to get on it - this is something else which is not time sensitive. But, and this is a big but - I will not post trash just to get on the list! There are some blogs that are so popular that getting on the list requires a huge number of comments. I’m not trying to game anybody so if that is the case, I regard that blog as if it does not have the plugin.

Get Some Backlinks

I don’t even have to think about this one. Loads of the blogs I visit are do-follow and the TC link is usually do-follow as well so I tend to just ignore this one and know that I’m getting backlinks a lot of the time.