Blogging 101: A Guide to Leaving Blog Comments

Image by Bethan

Since this is the season of goodwill, why not take a little time over the holidays – between eating turkey sandwiches and watching Elf on repeat – to turn your attention to your commenting habits.

Do you remember the first time you received a comment on your blog? Regardless of how long you’ve been blogging for, we hope you still love seeing the comments come in following a great post. Commenting is a great way to engage with your readers and show other bloggers that you appreciate their content, but sometimes commenting can be kicked to the curb when you’re really busy.

The Benefits of Commenting

If you rarely comment on other blogs, it’s time to wise up. Blog commenting can be advantageous in so many ways. For starters, it makes you a visible part of the blogging community and shows that you take an interest in other bloggers from your niche.  Leaving a comment also means you’re spreading your blog around the internet – add your blog URL to the required field and that’s a quality backlink to your site right there. Leaving an interesting comment can also drive traffic to your own blog from other readers, and even from brands and marketing agencies.

Commenting Etiquette

We could write a whole post on the etiquette of commenting, but here are the basics:

• Read the blog post. We know this sounds silly but you’d be surprised about the amount of comments that are left that don’t have anything to do with the blog post, which leads on to the next part.
• Leave a comment that adds value – leaving ‘so cute’ or ‘great shoes!’ comments just to get a backlink is a little spammy it doesn’t make you look good.
• Speaking of spammy… don’t leave links to your blog, Twitter, Facebook page AND the giveaway you’re running. Most commenting forms will already allow you to include a link to your blog so doing this excessively is downright rude.
• Own your comment – if you have a valid point or even if you disagree with what the blogger has written, stand by your comment and don’t post anonymously. Offensive or hateful language will likely result in your comment being marked as spam, but most bloggers will welcome lively debate and a mix of opinions on their site.

Hit Reply

Keep an eye on the comments your readers leave and make sure you reply to them in a timely manner, particularly those asking questions or furthering the discussion of your particular topic. Replying to comments shows that you care about your readers and is a great way of extending the topic within your post.

Not all readers will know that you’ve replied to them unless they’ve requested to be notified of follow up comments by email, so if they have a burning question you could always answer it on Twitter instead.

Team Comment Back

If someone has taken the time to comment on your recent post, why not check out their blog in return? You might find your new favourite blog this way, the blogger will appreciate it and by checking out their blogroll you could find a whole host of new blogs to follow. Think of it as blogging karma – you’ll be giving a blogger the same warm and fuzzy feelings you receive when someone leaves a comment on your blog.

What’s your blog commenting routine?