Getting comments on your blog is usually something that bloggers look forward to.  For the most part, people comment when they like what you’ve written or agree with what you’ve had to say.

As a first impression, a high comment count leads to instant credibility. A blog with a large number of comments may be perceived by casual visitors as holding more weight than a similar blog that has no comments or only sparse comments.  In this light, comments may be seen as the life’s blood of a new blog and as such, comments should be encouraged.

But what is the proper way to deal with a commenter that disagrees with your opinion or worse, simply gets rude or offensive?  If you blog about controversial topics (or simply blog for a long enough time), you are going to see some of these.  If you make a point of tackling the tough subjects, it’s a good bet that at least half of your comments are going to disagree with your opinion of the subject.  Another quarter of those comments are going to be rude replies.

Why you should never delete a comment that disagrees with your opinion:

A blog is designed as an interactive medium.  Any comment is a chance for you to continue a discussion with your readers, to further your position on a topic, or just allow you the chance to lend a more personal touch to what you’ve written.  A dissenting comment gives you the opportunity to address an issue more detail than you did in the original post or to explain something in a different way, should your readers find the original entry vague or unclear.

Someone will always disagree with your opinion.  Don’t take these posts a attacks, take them as conversation.  Answer them courteously and with care.  You are responding to another human being, not just a series of 0′s and 1′s.  The sign of a great blogger is his or her ability to answer criticism or negativity with a smile and a ton of respect, not to flame his or her opposition or simply toss that comment into the null file because it challenges what you have to say.

So when should you delete a comment?

While you should always answer comments that disagree with your ideas, there are most definitely times when a comment should be deleted immediately. These include, but are not limited to, the following reasons:

• Obvious Spam:
  The commenter dropped his URL 3 or 4 times in the comment, the comment is simply gibberish with a link, or the comment is something completely generic that’s obviously been added by a machine or spam bot.  These should be tossed to /dev/null or deleted immediately.
• Derogatory or Socially unacceptable comments:
  I have no idea why some people feel the need to post this type of comment, but they sometimes do.  If your commenter feels the need to use a slew of profanity or spread a hate-filled agenda using comments on your blog, they should most definitely be deleted as soon as they are identified.  This type of comment at best will generate more of the same.  At worst, they cost you readers.
• Comments that personally insult other commenters on your blog:
  This is an even worse case scenario than above.  One person took the time to leave his or her thoughts on something you have written and someone else personally attacks this commenter because either their opinion differs or they simply have not mastered the art of being anything other than a jack*$$.  These comments should be deleted and followed by a comment, post or general message of your own stating that it will not be tolerated for any reason.  Then block that person from commenting permanently.  It is your responsibility to ensure that your readers feel comfortable posting comments, don’t lose the trust that they give you.  Fight for them

There are several more reasons that you might choose to delete a comment, but think about it before you do.  It’s better to err on the side of a little spamminess than to put off someone who might simply not understand the etiquette of blog commenting.

I have a trackback from a blog that said horrible things about one of my posts.  Should I delete it?

No.  You should approve it and then check your page views for the day.  There’s a good chance that you will see an increase in traffic and perhaps comments on that particular post.  As the (in)famous quote by Brendan F. Behan so succinctly words it:

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

In more modern circles this is usually shortened to; “Any press is good press” or “All press is good press”. It’s as true a statement as can be made.  Any publicity will get you noticed.  Some of the readers that the negative comment prompted to come see what you really had to say might just be inclined to agree with your side of the issue, or simply like your style.   You get traffic, you gain readers, it’s all good.

I personally had one group of individuals go crazy calling me names and being completely derogatory towards me because of one post I wrote about a year ago.  In the end, they gained me over 1,000 visits for the day of the post and 3,000 overall.  Of those, I’m sure a few are still reading the blog in question.

My response?  I sent the blogger that started the insult-fest a very polite and professional thank you email for the traffic he or she sent over and thanked him/her for taking the time to read the post carefully enough to pick it apart.  I think that I unnerved the person.  They have never mentioned any of my sites again.  That’s too bad, really.  I made about $300.00 on that passion filled flurry.

I’ll wrap this up with a cautionary statement.  While this is a post about how you can avoid becoming a comment Nazi, you also need to realize that not everyone out there really cares if they offend their readers or not.  You will probably find that at least on comment that you leave is deleted or never allowed through moderation.  Don’t let this discourage you.  Continue leaving comments on other people’s blogs, but remember the rules above.

Post constructive comments that are actually relevant to the topic of the post.  Be courteous and if you disagree be even more diligent in making the point that you disagree with the position the person is writing about and not the person who wrote it.  Don’t do anything on someone else’s blog that you would not allow on your own.  It’s common courtesy, but it’s often ignored on the Internet.  It’s time for us to bring it back.

When I started the frst experiment in incresing blog traffic in 30 days several things happened.  Some were expected (such as increased traffic!), some were not.  Unfortunately, the things that I did not expect invalidated the results of the experiment completely.

My food blog at cbsop was picked up by a food blog advertising network, which goes to show that hard work does pay off, but also results in markedly higher numbers that are difficult to reliably interpret.

Off the list.

The second was a Stumble by Andy Beard that gained this blog several hundred additional visits over the course of two days with a lot of residual traffic.  while both of these things are good, together they had me scratching my head and wondering just how I was supposed to wade through the numbers I was getting and present them in anything like an honest light.

The honest answer was… I couldn’t

So, now that all the ruckus has subsided, I’m going to take another stab at this beginning December 1st 2007.  I’ll give the experiment a new title and we’ll start fresh and see where the ride takes us.

I hope you enjoy, I know I will.

Part four in a series on driving more traffic to your blog in 30 days.

So, have you been playing along? If so, you should probably know what your routine for the day should have been. If not, I’ll recap.

1. Post a new entry to your blog (or blogs) and if possible, mention someone else’s blog in your post, making sure to send a trackback or pingback to them as well.
2. Go find 5 blogs that you’ve never commented on before and leave a relevant comment on the entry of your choice.

Why do I mention adding a new post before commenting elsewhere? So that any reader that comes to peek at your blog finds fresh new content waiting for them. It has today’s date on it, it’s in reference to something that’s current in the world, and if it was written well, it might just bring them back. Search engines will almost always deposit a reader somewhere deep down your entry archives. Many people will click over to your main blog page to see if there’s anything new, don’t disappoint them!

Finding other blogs to leave comments on may be a bit of a challenge, depending on the niche you write in, and regardless of what you may think, every blogger is a niche blogger. Even if you’re basically just a daily journal writer, your writing is targeted…mostly to other daily journal writers, but it’s targeted nonetheless.

If you’re going to comment on new blogs, you’ve got to find them. The best places that I’m aware of to do this are sites like BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. These services cost you nothing, but in the case of BlogCatalog, I receive at least 15 visits per day just to CbsoP, and it’s been responsible for driving most of this blog’s traffic up to this point. To gain the most advantage from these sites, you’ll need to register. In the case of BlogCatalog, spending some time in the discussions is a good idea as well. I’m honestly not as familiar with MyBlogLog, so I’ll discuss their benefits in detail later.

Once you’ve registered, go check out their blog directory. A quick look at the tag cloud will point you to blogs like your own, or at least to other bloggers with similar interests. From there, finding new blogs to comment on won’t be a problem. Finding a lack of them might!

It’s probably a good idea at this point to start keeping a liest of the “New” blogs you’ve commented on. If you’re like me, a good portion of the blogs you come across will end up in your RSS reader and you’ll probably comment there again. This is a good thing! Being active in other bloggers comment sections can only help you to gain friends, acquaintances and in the end, readers of your own. I’m not recommending that you spend your entire day dropping comments, but it never hurts if you’ve got something of value to contribute to the discussion and in the end, most blogs are forums for discussion and community. If you’re a part of it, you’ll get attention. Just make sure it’s positive attention unless you’re very good at damage control!

Now that you’ve got tools to find new blogs to comment at, take a look around both BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog. Send a few friend requests or add a few friends. Join some communities (or neighborhoods) leave a comment or two for the other bloggers. If you’re tracking your statistics like you should be, you’ll see some of those people stop by your blog. One or two of them might mention your work on their own blog, and you’ve just gained the most valuable thing another blogger can offer you, a share of their readership.

If everything is going well, you may have already noticed a few new faces stopping by your blog after just a few days worth of effort. Tomorrow we’ll get in to some of the finer points of keeping them thre once they’ve landed, and getting them to subscribe to your feeds. RSS is the bread and butter of the modern blog and really should not be underestimated.

Until tomorrow, I remain as always, your humble narrator and partner in crime.

There are probably a few of you out there who’ve been wondering what happened to the author of this series over the past two days.  Honestly, it ws something called a weekend, and a teething one year old…  It was my actual life, and those can interrupt even the most dedicated of us.  I deviated from the “plan” and this little experiment may suffer a bit for it, though honestly, I don’t expect anyone to work nonstop for 30 days straight.  Time off is good for the soul.  It recharges the batteries and clears the mind.  It’s necessary.

Had I thought of it, I would have set this blog to post new content over the weekend.  This is something that WordPress excels at.  (If you don’t know how to do that, just wait, I’ll be writing about it soon.)  The problem was, I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be writing this weekend.  My plans were to run straight through.  The problem with plans is that they don’t always work out.

The point really is.  It doesn’t matter.  Even if you’ve started along with me on this and for some reason you end up missing a few days in the process, there’s no reason not to simply pick back up and soldier on from that point, which is exactly what I’m going to do.

The plan for the day, write one more post.  Be sure that that post cites information on at least one other blog that relates to each website, and make bloody sure that I send a trackback or a pingback to that site, to let them know I mentioned them.  With any luck the site author will hop over to see what I’ve said.

The second step is as described in the previous entry in this series.  I’m going to go find 5 blogs I’ve never commented on for each of my two blogs (yup, ten total) and leave a comment there.  I’m going to be sure that those comments are relevant, are appropriate to the blog I leave them at, and that I’ve added my site address to my comment information. (Not in the text of the comment, with the exceptions we’ve already noted.)

That’s it kiddies.  Day three is about getting started in a big way.  Day four gets even more fun.

Stay tuned!

Today’s installment is on the tactics we’ll use to gain more readers on the two blogs in this study. These will include, but are by no means limited to, the following actions:

• Posting relevantly and often. At least once a day and up to 3 posts per day, per blog.
• Leaving intelligent comments on related blogs
• Leveraging the power of Social Networking and Community sites like StumbleUpon, digg, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog
• Using the power of “People that know people” to get the word out.

There are other equally important things that we will not be doing, period:

• Leaving irrelevant or worthless comments (Trolling)
• Actively asking someone to visit our blogs in a comment (Comment spamming)
• Adding our blogs to link lists, exchanges or blogrolls that they are not already a part of. (As I’ve said in previous entries, CbsoP has been around for a while, so it’s been signed up for a few. No new ones will be added.)
• Paying anyone to review our blogs and “get the buzz out”

I don’t use the word tactics lightly. 30 days is an almost insignificant amount of time to show a significant traffic increase on an established blog, and a relatively short amount of time to attract repeat readers to a brand-spanky-new blog. To see a tangible difference in our baseline statistics, the moves we’re making must be thought out well, and executed with a very keen eye for not only details, but quality. We’re going to have to make a battle plan and stick to it with military determination, otherwise all of this will be nothing but a waste of time, and that’s not what we’re after here.

Let’s get a bit more in depth on the topics mentioned above. These are key points that are mentioned repeatedly in traffic building articles from all over the web, and they are very effective, especially over the long run. The point here however, is to leverage the same long term methods to achieve measurable short term results. To use them effectively, we have to understand why they work, and how to make them work for us a little more rapidly.

What To Do:

Post relevantly and often. At least once a day and up to 3 posts per day.

I’m sure a lot of you just looked at the monitor and mumbles something along the lines of:

Well, DUH!

The point of the above statement is that you must post regularly. Let me say that again, just so I’m sure we’re on the same page.

You… Must… Post… Regularly…

It really doesn’t matter how often regularly happens to be if you’re trying to build a readership over a long period of time. As long as you maintain a consistent schedule for posting your blog entries, your readers will come to expect your posts at their normal intervals and that schedule will work just dandy.

If we’re looking to drive larger amounts of traffic in a short period of time, there’s better be something new for not only your readers, but the search engine spiders to find. Each and every day.

The reason I’ve limited the maximum number of posts to three per blog per day is simple. While we want to give people something new to work with every day, we also don’t want to overload them or to have potential return readers come to the conclusion that we’re just tossing out anything we can come up with. The entries need to be intelligent, informative, spell checked and proofread. Putting up a ton of junk isn’t going to attract more readers, it’s going to scare them away. it’s much better to have one extremely well written post than to have 20 pieces of offal.

One more point… If you use WordPress or another blogging platform that allows you to automatically send trackbacks to any site that you link to in your post, turn this feature ON. It will let site owners know you’ve mentioned them, and they’re likely to come and see what was said.

Leave intelligent comments on related blogs

This is a proven method of getting people to come take a look at your blog, but there are things about it that most articles I’ve read overlook, and it’s not just a minor oversight, it’s one of the key things to remember if you want to move more traffic your way:

You can’t just comment repeatedly on the same sites over and over.

One truth in life is that most people are creatures of habit, and it’s likely you are no different. People tend to find a group of sites they like, and they return to those sites, because they’re comfortable doing so. While leaving comments on a certain number of blogs may attract a certain number of their readers to your blog, after a short amount of time, everyone who was going to follow your link will have done so, and your traffic will stagnate. You must take the initiative to break out of that comfort zone and go find new places to comment. As always, those comments must be relevant to the topic discussed in the post, or you’re wasting your time and the blog owners.

As a rule, I’m going to say that we should be looking to find at least five new blogs per day to leave comments on. (Break out that RSS reader!)

Leverage the power of Social Networking and Community sites like StumbleUpon, digg, BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog

We’re going to use the discussion forums and any other features we can to alert people to updates and anything else that might be of interest to them. If you’re not a member of BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog, go sign up. Become active,a nd drop a link to your blogs from time to time. Again, we’re not going to generate a never ending stram of traffic from these communities, but chances are we’ll make some friends, and those friends will add a link from their blogs if they like what we’re up to. That’s a gift that keeps on giving!

StumbleUpon and digg allow us to put our blog in front of a very large number of potential visitors, so they should be used whenever possible. We’ll go over how to use these services later.

Use the power of “People that know people” to get the word out.

You’ve got friends, right? Chances are those friends have similar interests, or know people that do. Ask them to help you get the word out in places that you may not be as well connected. For every person that mentions your blogs, there are two or three that will hear of it through them.

What not To Do:

Leave irrelevant or worthless comments (Trolling)

I can’t stress enough the amount of damage that can be caused by leaving irrelevant comments. It is nothing but a waste of time for both us and the owner of the blog it was left on. At best everyone is just going to ignore the comment all together. At worst, it generates bad feelings from the owner of the blog where you left it, and we’re going for feel good, not angry.

Actively ask someone to visit our blogs in a comment (Comment spamming)

When you leave a comment on a blog, a link back to your blog is created automatically. Even if the link has the nofollow attribute set, it’s still there, and it’s still available for that blog’s readers to click on. Adding another link back to your blog “just because” is nothing more than spam, and will generally not be greeted with a positive attitude.

The only exception to this rule happens when we’ve got a link to relevant and related content on one of our blogs that we’re referencing in our comment. Only link back to a specific entry, never to the main page of a blog, except in the most unique cases. If you do, make sure there’s a good reason! It’s usually better to simply discuss what you’ve readat their blog on your own, and then leave a trackback.

Add our blogs to link lists, exchanges or blogrolls that they are not already a part of.
(As I’ve said in previous entries, CbsoP has been around for a while, so it’s been signed up for a few. I’m not removing it from those at this point, but no new ones will be added.)

Generally speaking, it isn’t a great idea tosign up for a lot of link lists or blogrolls, unless you blog in a very tight niche (like food blogging). Chances are the links are not being displayed in the places that are going to do you the most good. It’s better to focus on your content and on getting to know other bloggers that blog on the same topics you do. Their readers are already predisposed to like what you’re doing.

Pay anyone to review our blogs and “get the buzz out”

Though it may be a viable way to drive traffic to your blog, it can also be prohibitively expensive. It’s better to get the A-list to mention you because you’ve done something that’s gained their attention. (Which is another topic, and one that I’ll cover on a later date.) If you’ve got the money to spend, dropping some Money at pay Per Post or ReviewMe might be a great way to get a heck of a lot of visitors for a few days, but chances are none of them will be back after that, so you’ve just spent your hard earned duckets for nothing.

In Conclusion:

This list of do’s-and-don’ts is not definitive, and does not necessarily apply in every case. They are general rules gleaned from a lot of research and my own experiences. Most are generally accepted as good practice, and should be followed. Those deemed to be inconsiderate are to be avoided, even though we’re looking to drive traffic quickly. Following the etiquette of the blogging community is something we should do whenever possible, especially since if and when we do become the A-Listers, we’ll be the ones enforcing it.