Are you sitting on a lifeless blog?
You slave away putting up great, useful content, but no one is sharing it and you’re lucky if you get two comments on your blog – that aren’t from your mother or your best friend.
You don’t understand it because you feel you have an awesome blog with a great CTA (call-to-action) to turn readers into customers, but you just don’t have the traffic to make it happen.
Something isn’t right.
Like many webpreneurs who are new to blogging and online business, you’re not sure what you’re doing wrong.
It’s true – having a blog is great for business.
- Small businesses with a blog generate 126% more leads than business without a blog (Think Creative)
- 61% of U.S consumers have bought items based on recommendations from blogs (BlogHer)
- 70% of consumers read blogs, not advertisements, to learn about companies (MOZ)
But, how do you make people come to your blog in the first place?
There are different ways to generate traffic to your site, but one way is having a strategic digital marketing strategy.
Don’t let this term scare you. It’s a fancy term for a simple plan: get yourself and your business known.
Social media is a huge place and in order for you and your business to be on the radar of people and influencers, you need a great digital marketing plan that incorporates social media marketing, blogger outreach and good ol’ relationship building.
For the sake of this post, let’s stick to good ol’ relationship building. Building relationships with other bloggers and influencers can help you bring in more traffic than you ever could on your own.
A simple way to start building strategic relationships is through blog commenting.
Blog commenting can get you more results and better results than a few tweets or updates on your Facebook page.
In this post, you will learn why blog commenting is important to your business and how to write a great blog comment that will drive traffic to your site.
Why Should I Comment on Blogs?
When I first started out, I had a plan in place to grow my blog by building relationships with key influencers in the blogging niche.
I found by leaving comments on popular blogs, I started to get noticed.
Blog commenting helped me get to where I am today. Let’s look at reasons why you should start making an effort to comment on blogs.
- It’s a low cost way to market your blog or business
- It requires no initial set up, unlike a large content marketing campaign
- When you leave a comment, you receive an inbound link. Every time you comment, you’re receiving a link to your site.
- You’ll get noticed. The more you comment, the more likely influencers and blog owners will notice you.
- You’ll get traffic
- It opens the door to building relationships with blog owners. This can lead to guest posting – which further expands your content reach.
- It builds up your authority in your industry when you are commenting on many popular blogs
- Disqus, a blog commenting system, serves a way for you to promote your blog or business when others click on your bio
- It’s a bonus when you comment on blogs that enable CommentLuv. This places a link to your blog post for others to view and click, bringing new traffic to your site.
When I leave Comments, Nothing Happens!
Sure, every once in a while you leave a comment on ProBlogger or Boost Blog Traffic, thinking if you leave any comment, you’re bound to see an increase in traffic.
The trick to blog commenting isn’t how many popular blogs you can go to and drop a comment; it’s how you comment that will be a factor in catapulting your success online.
Crafting the Perfect Blog Comment
1. Be Unique and Insightful
What do popular blogs have in common (besides being popular and having a ton of traffic)?
They have conversations and engagement in their comments. Part of the reason is the blog owner makes an effort to respond to every comment they receive.
This is something I do on my blog and am passionate about building a relationship with my viewers.
If you want the attention from influencers and blog owners, your comment should
- Add to the conversation
- Be more than a sentence – write it as if it’s a blog post
- Offer your opinion
- Tell your story and how it relates to the blog post
- Challenge what you read and offer your side of the story
This will spark curiosity from the blog owner and can help you begin a mutual relationship.
2. Be the First to Comment
When you are the first person (or close to first) to leave a comment, everyone after you will see your comment before they leave theirs.
This increases your chances of people reading your comment and clicking on your link, increasing your traffic and getting noticed.
Saying this is easy, but doing it is a challenge. The best ways to find out when a blog post goes live is to
- Follow the blog or blog owner on Twitter
- Join Feedly.com. Feedly is a news aggregator you can customize by compiling feeds from blogs you want to follow
3. Comment on Many Blogs
To really make an impact on your marketing strategy, it’s a good idea to find relevant blogs related to your industry, follow them, and comment on them consistently.
When you start to do this, you’ll begin to build beneficial relationships with the blog owners and influencers. This opens the door to guest posting – another highly recommended content marketing strategy.
Wrapping it Up
Growing your business and generating traffic doesn’t happen over night. It also doesn’t happen alone.
With some meaningful, targeted blog commenting, you can begin to grow your network of influential bloggers and get your business and product in front of a larger audience. This not only helps generate more traffic for you, but it also helps build authority in your niche.
What’s great about blog commenting is it’s an easy and low-cost way to market your business and get noticed.
Just remember, the keys to commenting are to be the first one to leave a quality comment, make it useful and comment a lot.
So, tell me, what steps are you going to start using today to fit blog commenting into your digital marketing plan?
I know couple of these strategies but no all of these. Thanks for sharing your knowledge with us! keep up the good work.