There are already millions of blogs floating around in the cyber cosmos, and new ones are popping up every second. If that isn’t enough, all kinds of people are expressing their views, joining in discussions, and just stopping by to say hello in the form of comments left on blogs.
In and amongst this seemingly large heap of information, you as a creative freelancer, in need of useful and effective self promotion, may be wondering whether there is any point at all in commenting on other blogs for promotional gain.
Well, actually, there is a point. There are some excellent benefits of commenting:
1. Credibility. The writer of the blog you post on, as well as its readers will begin to see you as an expert on what you are talking about. This is good news if it relates to your industry and your speciality.
2. Adds to your Strategic Visibility. This was mentioned in a previous post. This is the idea that people are reminded of you, that you and your name and link is seen in key areas on the web.
3. Traffic. Always make a point of putting in a link to your portfolio, blog or site if you can. People intrigued by your comment will click your link to find out more about you and this will drive people to your sites.
4. Idea Creation. This is particularly useful if you write a blog. If you comment something useful or interesting, chances are that this can be turned into an effective new post on your blog.
5. Important readers. Key people, including potential clients and key influencers in your industry might well see your comment for obvious benefits.
6. Networking. Commenting on blogs is a useful networking activity. People are more likely to talk about you, refer you, and link to you if they have heard about you.
7. Returned comments. Commenting on others’ blogs will often lead to people returning the favour (as well as through traffic coming through your comment) on your own blog. Try it. This has the benefit of adding social value to your site, feedback on your work, as well as potentially helpful information for you.
8. Improve skills. Writing valuable comments exercises that important area between the ears. For creatives and particularly writers, this is an excellent opportunity to practice and improve your idea creation and writing skills.
9. Improves Ranking. Search engines like Google love things called backlinks. These are links that their spiders can see link back to your site. Comments with links will add to the number of backlinks to your site and thus will improve where you are ranked in search engine results.
10. Makes you read. Active commenting will push you to read more of what you are commenting on. If the post you choose is relevant to you, a more solid grasp of what you are reading about will be very useful.
This doesn’t mean you have to spend all day on the Internet to address just one angle of effective online self-promotion. You need a simple strategy in mind before heading out to comment on posts occasionally.
Half of your strategy is being aware of the 10 points above. The other half is deciding to comment on blogs that are relevant to your field, have a decent amount of traffic and influence and will attract the types of people you yourself want to network with.
You can search for relevant blogs on social bookmarking site Delicious or Google blog search, for example. You can look at traffic levels and rankings on Alexa.
Happy commenting!
Don’t hesitate to comment with your thoughts below.
