Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

The significance of leaving comments on other blogs

Feb 04, 2008 3 Comments »

A big reason — it is one of the many reasons — that I fail to generate decent traffic for my  blogs is that I rarely leave comments on other blogs. I don’t know if it is some kind of a mental block or lack of time. I think it is lack of time because in order to leave a credible comment you not only have to read the post very carefully you must also know what you’re talking about. I never have enough time to read the other blog posts carefully. Today when I left a comment on Muhammad’s post at Problogger.net I had decided to write a small post on the benefits of living good comments on other blogs.

Although a majority of people leave comments on other blogs merely to generate traffic this is not a good policy even if you are leaving comments merely to generate traffic. You should mostly participate in the comments section if you have something really solid to say, if you can really push the ongoing discussion forward and have got some valuable input to give. It is not your comment that gets you traffic, it is the quality of your comment. If people are impressed by what you have written in your comment they are more prone to visiting your blog to know further about you. By “impressed” I don’t mean to imply that you go on impressing people and do nothing else and then get too obsessive about the whole idea of creating the right impression. I just mean to say be a productive participant. Even if you’re just goofing around goof around in a good manner so that it doesn’t seem that you are leaving your comment just for the sake of leaving your link there. Given below are some benefits of leaving good comments on other blogs:

You can leave your link their

OK, this sounds like a sinister reason for leaving comments but nonetheless it is a great benefit. There is a thing called “links juice”. I have no idea what it means but some bloggers let you get SEO benefits when you leave comments on the blogs and some bloggers don’t allow it for obvious reasons. Even if you don’t get any SEO benefit you can derive, gradually, great amount of traffic from these links.

You can increase your network

Personally I think this is the greatest benefit of leaving comments on other blogs. When you leave comments you begin to interact with bloggers and their readers. Many people, slowly, blog by blog, begin to know you and start frequenting your blog. when they frequent your blog there is a greater chance that they will link to you and subscribe to your RSS feeds. This builds up your traffic not only from other websites and blogs but also from the search engines.

Commenting broadens your perspective and you get more ideas to write about on your blog

Lots of interesting stuff happens in the comments section. In fact sometimes the real exchange of ideas happens in the comments section and not in the blog post. You get to read different opinions on the same topic and this way it helps you view the same thing from different angles and attain a broader perspective, consequently increasing your sphere of knowledge and wisdom.

These are a few things that I can quickly think of at this moment. Can you think of any other benefits of leaving good comments on other blogs?

50 Most Influential Blogs

Sep 12, 2007 6 Comments »

What influences you is a highly personal choice but there are things, personalities and events that affect a multitude of people and that’s what encompasses the NxE’s list of 50 Most Influential Bloggers and I think all the bloggers in the list deserve to be there. My personal favorites are:

• Neil Patel — SEO
• Leo Babauta — Personal development
• Rand Fishkin — SEO
• Om Malik — Technology and gadgets
• Brian Clark — Copywriting
• Pete Cashmore — Technology, Internet, SM, etc.
• Darren Rowse — Earning money from blogging
• Gina Trapani — Personal development and life improvement

There are some other great blogs but I hardly read even these regularly. I don’t get to spend much time on blogging (I’m desperately trying to change that) and whatever time I get I prefer writing posts rather than reading other blogs and interacting on them (hence, lack of traffic).

Technorati Tags: influential bloggers, top bloggers, blogging

Commenting arrrgh…

Apr 08, 2007 No Comments »

Commenting is the most boring part of blogging unless I really feel like saying something. There are two reason my blogging hasn’t taken off the way it could have:

1. I rarely comment on other blogs and online forums.
2. I’m not writing linkbait content.

Ironically I’m writing linkbait content for a client :-).

Coming back to comments, I think most of the times when I start visiting the other blogs I’m thoroughly exhausted and have no energy left to think constructively or feel the heat of the ongoing discussion. Another discouraging factor is the amount of silly comments like “A very well written post…”, or “Thanks for sharing this…”, or “Good points…”, I mean, this is just a trick to leave the link and I don’t want to be a part of such a group. But this is the secondary problem and I can certainly overcome this if I try. The primary problem is the timing. I start reading the blogs after completing the day’s assignments and by the time I read other blogs I’ve already worked for good 10-12 hours.

One solution is, I should leave comments during weekends. This is just a better-than-nothing solution because the topics then are no longer current.

In the morning? Yes, I can, on alternate days, keep an hour aside to quickly visit a few blogs and try to participate in the discussions. I think I’ll try that.

Social Linking Via StumbleUpon

Feb 02, 2007 No Comments »

I have neither used linkbaiting nor social media bookmarking websites up till now simply because I’m not writing as regularly and as well as I would like to. I know, I know, I wouldn’t suggest you to have such an attitude, but I’m not in a great hurry to boost my traffic. I want it to increase on its on, gradually. To produce quality content I need some time, and time is something that right now I don’t have.

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How To Increase Your RSS Subscribers

Jan 24, 2007 No Comments »

Your RSS subscribers are the best indication of how popular your blog is. If your visitors like what you publish, then they obviously want to keep track of what you publish next. And getting email notifications is quite bothersome. Subscribing to RSS feeds is the most popular way of reading multiple blogs in an organized manner. For instance, in my Bloglines account I have over 120 blog RSS subscriptions.

Providing RSS feeds is a great way of not only getting repeat traffic, but also gauging the success of your blog. The more people subscribe to your RSS feeds, the greater is the popularity your blog enjoys.

But how do you encourage more people to subscribe to your RSS feed?

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