[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series.]
One of the best ways for you to continue to build community, traffic, and rapport for your brand and your blog is to simply comment on other people’s blog posts. This is also a Content strategy as well!
This is one of the easiest and cost-effective ways (since it’s free!) of gaining an increased readership and following! It also has a number of other benefits such as keeping you up to date with other people’s opinions as well as giving you fresh insight and inspiration. I can’t tell you how many of my blog posts have been jump started because of something that I read or a comment that I created in response to a blog post!
But it does take time to not only to read that blog post (not just scan!) and then to comment! I’ve always challenged myself to streamline anything that I can and here’s how I save myself a lot of time with a few keystrokes:
[tentblogger-vimeo 21441100]
Pretty sweet tip, right?
Again, I’m using FireFox 3.0+ as my browser which lets me use easyComment plugin! If you’re using FireFox 4.0+ you’ll need a combination of Pre-Fill Comments via Greasemonkey.
Hope that tip helps! Three cheers to streamlining rote processes!
[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series.]
Great tips… I have a question for ya though.
My blog only has the name and email. I want to add the URL in there as well so people can promote thie rsites, but I don’t know how? This is the only commenting system I can get on my site without doing some crazy HTML. Anything I can do?
hm………… choose a different theme?
Sweet. Now if only the easyComment plugin created an extension for Google’s Chrome..
Or maybe TentBlogger needs to release some Chrome plugin to do the same thing?!
…
Hey, this post was awesome!
thanks dave! you’re awesome!
Good suggestion. I’m a Chrome guy, but I set this up with a form filler that I use and it works great. Thanks John!
Which form filler do you use, I’d like to organise this on Chrome rather than having to pull up Firefox to comment easily.
love to know too.
sweet!
Thank you for this great post! I am new to Social Media and anything that will make things easier is great!
Thank you,
Patricia Knight
http://patriciaknight.wordpress.com/
Such a good point. I only just cottoned on to the idea, despite having been clicking other commenters’ links already myself. Thanks!
ahha!
Commenting on other blogs is huge. We are constantly encouraging our clients to do this, but it seems like it is harder than it should be. Making this process easy is a big part of what we do with our Todaypulse product. Love the extension, great tip.
oOoOoOh. todaypulse… what is that?
Great workflow. I thought my workflow was fast enough, but it’s not this fast! I use Text Expander on my Mac and I’ve created snippets so that when I type “hs.com” it expands the text to the appropriate website – idiot-proof, which is good for me. This might be a good workflow for you Chrome users.
But I’m on Firefox, so since your way is faster, I’ll be tryinig out this plug-in.
snippets! love it. I used to do that.
This is sweet for getting faster responses and conversations going!
it really is.!
I do comment on other blogs… but thanks for the reminder that this is a means to connect while growing my own readership. This can be a solitary endeavour, make connections where you can!
I save time by using Google reader for my RSS feeds, I can read all my favorite blogs quickly and still click through if I have something to say! I click through to your blog often :0).
Me, too, Clara. It is a great time saver.
clara,
thanks so much!
Why not just use Disqus? You can track comments from a lot of blogs to you and from you as well. Or am I being obtuse again?
gina,
no way! i’m just not a fan of 3rd party comment systems. i’ll blog about this in time…
Wow, I wish this was available on Chrome! Or, as some of the commentors suggested, I wish more people would use Disqus that links right in with the click of a button.
I’ve used blogs that have Disqus as the commenting system, and I actually prefer they didn’t use it. I am more likely to comment on a blog that uses the native commenting system rather than using an off site provider.
that’s interesting. give me some more thoughts about this one!
I just decided last week to start commenting more on the blogs I read. When it comes to all things social media (facebook, twitter, blogs), I tend to lurk in the shadows rather than join in the conversation. However, I realized that I’m not sure the ROI of lurking is worth it. But the return from engaging is phenomenal.
I’ve been using Safari, but maybe it’s time to switch back to Firefox.
i love safari… don’t abandon it!
It feels like, if you’re already reading the post, that scrolling to the bottom would be a natural thing to do. And if you’ve ever commented (and don’t daily clean your cookies) the your information is likely stored. How much time does this actually save you?
I will 100% agree with you though, commenting on things is a great traffic generator.
i flush my cache a lot.
Great suggestion. I had never thought of using an add on for firefox to prefill my info for comments.
Thanks
jessica,
sure thing! let me know how it works for you!
I don’t know if this has been mentioned yet, but Chrome has the ability to use any Greasemonkey plugin.
Here’s what I mean: http://dvnt.be/dL0rmi
Check it out. I’m using the script from Chrome right now!
wah wah!
Installed it and tried it here! Awesome stuff!
sweet! glad you like it!
great tip John! I have been a big believer in this. As far as the system I use, I’m a Chrome guy. I’ve never adjusted any settings that I know of, yet I my info is mostly always filled out when I comment on blogs.
sweet! i guess you’re using the cache.
I use 1Password and have an “identity” setup as “Blog Commenter”. This contains my autofill details and can be quickly be inserted.
The bonus is that it has a lot of additional functionality and it works on multiple browsers, not just FireFox.
wow… never thought of using it for that… dang…!