Day 28: What’s Your Blog Commenting Strategy?

Yesterday we looked at how commenting can help us build our personal brand. Today, I want you to check out this article by Caroline Middlebrook on developing a blog commenting strategy. Do you think it’s important to take a more strategic view of commenting and to have a plan for how you want to incorporate commenting into your overall online behavior? If so, what is your blog commenting strategy?

Since I have (am) NOT a frequent or great commenter, I consequently have never thought much about commenting (except that I should do it more often) before this comment challenge. Thanks to some of the tasks, my thoughts are being turned toward directions that I have not and would never have looked at otherwise.

Caroline Middlebrook lists in her article the following goals she has in mind when leaving a comment.

Grab the attention of the readers

Grab the attention of the blogger

Develop my personal brand

Create some backlinks

I love when I get caught by surprise and thrown into a completely different direction than my train of thought had taken me.

I have NEVER left a comment on someone else’s blog with the sole intention to create a backlink. It never even crossed my mind. Now, that might have something to do with the problem that I am not a great and frequent commenter in the first place. Since yesterday’s comment challenge task about personal branding , at least I am now consciously aware of the personal branding issue.

Cafe Tortoni in Buenos Aires
Photo by z0diac

A couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Claudia Ceraso from FCE Blog . We met at a famous coffee house called Cafe Tortoni here in Buenos Aires. It was the perfect backdrop to a great conversation. Historically the cafe was frequented by artists and writers, like Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Gardel, and Alfonsina Storni among others.

Three hours went by without a blink. Among many things, the topic of blogging and the reasons people leave comments on "which" blogs came up. Claudia took me by surprise when she mentioned that many bloggers solely leave comments on "top" blogs with the purpose of diverting traffic from someone "famous" in the blogersphere to their own site.

Going back to the original question to reflect upon from the challenge task was:

Do you think it’s important to take a more strategic view of commenting and to have a plan for how you want to incorporate commenting into your overall online behavior?

I think that it is important to have a strategy while commenting…. BUT, I believe that it should be a straight forward strategy… such as helping others, adding a point of view, sharing a resource , add your reflection….

After all we are educators, we are in the "business" of teaching and learning. We are not in the business of needing to be better than the next teacher down the hallway. The ultimate goal is student learning, that is what defines success for us. If we share with a teacher down the hall or half way around the world, then a student (somewhere) will ultimately benefit.

I am not sure how I feel about a blogger who implements a strategy that involves leaving backlinks in order to generate traffic for their own site. That almost has a feeling of spam to me. I also don’t like the feeling of someone on purpose including a name of a "famous" blog with the soal purpose of luring them to their post, comment, or blog.

My commenting strategy needs to include appreciation and possibly support (for the blog author) and the attempt of (hopefully) adding a new perspective or experience to allow their train of thought to see the possibility of a different train track.

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Posted: 23. June, 2008 at 9:44 pm. Filed under: Blogging.
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