31DBBB Day 15: Leave Comments on Other Blogs
This is Day 15 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog, a group project we are doing together in an attempt to improve our blogs and help each other become better bloggers. You can read more about it and still sign-up to participate here. Please subscribe to our RSS Feed to stay updated on the project.
Today we are going to spend some time leaving comments on other blogs related to our niche. Thank you to all of you who participated on the first two weeks of assignments, we are gone through about half of the curriculum and are getting some good discussion back and forth as I initially hoped. Let’s keep up the effort and I hope everyone is having a good time while taking steps to improve their blogging.
- Week 1: Read about the first week of 31DBBB
- Week 2: The second week of 31DBBB
- Day 11 (Monday): Solve a Problem for your Reader
- Day 12 (Tuesday): Watch a First Time Reader Use your Blog
- Day 13 (Wednesday): Creating a Sneeze Page for your Blog
- Day 14 (Thursday): Write an Opinion Post on your Blog
- Day 15 (Friday): Leave Comments on Other Blogs
If I had one advice for any new or struggling blogger, it would be to participate in the greater community and regularly leave comments on as many blogs related to your niche as possible. This is exactly how I built up Anomalous Material and this is how you want to approach the game if you want to gain some type of readership early on.
Why Comment on Other Blogs?
- Network with fellow bloggers and make a name for yourself
- Start potentially fruitful relationships
- Link back to your blog
- Get potential new ideas for your own blog
What to Be Mindful About?
- Each comment is a mini-representation of yourself. Don’t make yourself look like a fool.
- Do not spam! Stay on topic and make insightful comments that are at least 2 or 3 sentences long.
- Let your comment show that you read the post
- Do not post links unless very highly relevant
- This is something that you have to sustain daily for the life of your blog (or almost)
Let’s put it this way, you have to work the hardest at this when your blog is still trying to find a footing. The return on investment will be initially low but you have to keep at it. From personal experience, what I did was:
- Visit hundreds of LAMB progressively
- Read and leave a few comments on blogs that seem to fit your “criteria”, bookmark those sites in a folder
- Some will respond and even comment on your blog: Those are the blogs and bloggers you want to keep nurturing
- Those who do not answer comments or return visits are immediately eliminated from the list (the bookmarks) of people you visit
- Rinse and repeat
Ultimately, how big your following becomes rest on how interesting your blog is but you will progressively win a readership that way without fail, unless there is something seriously wrong with your blog.
Assignment
- Your assignment today will be to spend at least 30 minutes browsing and commenting on blogs related to your niche. As a movie blogger, I can point you out to our blogroll as well as the LAMB as good starting points to begin this assignment.
- Come back and tell us what you learned from today’s assignment
20 Comments
Suffice to say, I have this one covered?
And in honesty, I spend at least an hour to two hours every day of time I don’t have visiting other peoples sites. It’s the most important thing you can do to build your community though.
Ahaha indeed Heather. Although we would love to have you all for ourselves
Agreed! I do this a lot. Just need to get a routine down for it as the one you described some days ago Castor.
I’m guilty of not doing enough of this initially. Community is one of the best things about blogging, and as any blogger would say, getting comments just feels awesome! Do unto others what you want others do unto you
I went all out today, commenting on every blog in my feeder (maybe 35) and even made an effort to comment on two podcasts I listened to (had to get tires changed so lots of sitting still with nothing to do). It does make you feel involved, and hopefully there’s some feedback to look forward to.
Glad to hear that Jess
The key is to sustain this type of work on a regular basis (daily). I personally spend at least 30 minutes visiting and commenting on other blogs each day.
How common is it with comment tracker outside WP? Ifind it really hard to keep track of my random comments on blogs I dont follow on a regular basis.
I am thinking och changing hosting is there any good external comment tracking service available as plugin or service?
I don’t use any comment tracking except by using the bookmark method I delineated above. Some quick googling pointed me out to this:
http://mashable.com/2007/06/13/comment-tracking/
I try to comment outside the movie niche, so I can bring fresh blood xD But yeah, comment, reply to comments, and comment backs. I never thought of bookmarking new blocks, and do an elimination process. xD must do that over the weekend~
I would think I spend too much time reading and commenting on other blogs.
I also try to comment on non film blogs and get some occational visits but it seldom builds from that kind of visitors.
what I do is find other people who follow the same music, or the same actors as I do.
OH MY GOD PUPPYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!
Sorry, what were you saying?
This is the most crucial bit of advice for anyone starting out, and I’m a little surprised that it comes this far into the workshop. I suppose you need to put your own house in order before you start pushing out to other places.
I can attest that the surge in traffic was nearly instantaneous when I first starting looking around and commenting on other blogs. It’s a tough discipline to maintain – but if you can work it into a weekly routine rather than a daily one, you’d be surprised what you can accomplish.
See, I never realized that people will actually click over to your blog when you do this. I also use to think, “Who cares about my comment? I now realize how vital this is to building readership. What I’m still trying to pin down is a schedule where I comment and still write my own posts! 30 minutes just isn’t enough time for me, I guess I’m a slow reader? I’m trying to write four of five posts on the weekends, but it never seems to work out. Now I’m taking a class on Saturdays and my kids are back in school. Life really gets in the way of blogging doesn’t it? By the way Castor, where do you get all the great pics you use everyday?
You seem like such a busy lady Colleen! I use Google Image to get my pictures. You obviously need to know what you are looking for
Its another great post to mingle with other friends in my niche. I weekly browse all other movie blogs to get some intense knowledge on what actually they do to develop their blogs. So that, I try to test few things which may even flops. But getting experience is a great stuff. Also I comment in other blogs, so that I yet to know about a new friend in my niche.
But one thing which really frustrates me was “Whenever I write a post, I expect some really good comments from other movie bloggers”. But in reality it dint happen.
Castor I have some idea. After finishing our 31days training session, If time prevails, we make a list of some good friends in our Niche. And we make a data list, so that we yet to know about “How many total friends which are in our list”. It help us to do some excellent projects in future. Also try to have an Online conference at Skype is a good choice to express our ideas and share our thoughts. What do you think about this? Cheers
Another aspect that have helped me increase comments on my own site was that when I got a few comments I added the widget with most recent comments. It took away the pressure a lot of readers probably feel because it definitively increased commentwise after that.
But you gotta build from something otherwise it might backfire on you.
I learned that this HAS to be an integral part of my blogging experience. I try as often as possible to drop a line or two on Movie Morlocks. But I do not see it as a referring link in my blog statistics. I love looking at my blog stats for the referring links.
Total Film magazine’s blog is another place where I have submitted a couple of blog comments on.
As part of the assignment I posted a comment on a new site – one dedicated to Alfred Hitchcock.
I try to devote at least 30 minutes a day to making comments on various blogs in my niche and others. However, I could probably do better.
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