I was reading an article the other day explaining different ways to get people to leave comments on your blog and one technique that stood out to me was fairly simple (my favorite kind). He said that you should spend a little bit of time each day visiting blogs in your niche and to leave relevant helpful comments on blog posts that interest you. The more helpful you are the better chance you have of raising your profile, which hopefully will drive more traffic to your blog. That totally makes sense.
Well that got me thinking. How can we get people to leave comments on our site even faster? What can we do in exchange for them leaving a comment(s)? I know there are thousands of new blogs started each week and I am sure most of them would love to get comments. One thing I have noticed is… if you take the time and post comments on smaller blogs that don’t get a lot of activity (ones with fewer comments on them), that often the owner of that blog will checkout your blog to see what you have going. Many times he will leave a comment on your blog as gratitude for your comments. This can happen with the Big Boy blogger sites as well, but probably not as often.
So the next thing that popped in my head was a “comment exchange” program, so I did a quick search on Google and saw that there were some that already existed. We looked at a few of them and read different reviews, but we were not too impressed with any of the ones we saw. So we decided not to join any of them.
What we did decide to do is try our own non-formal comment exchange program. Here is how it works… If you leave at least one “helpful and relevant” comment on one of our blog posts (just writing “Great Post!” does not count), Mark and I will do our best to checkout your blog and return the favor with a comment as well. Sound good?
Now we are not guaranteeing anything, as we do not know who will be commenting on our site. But if you have a good blog started with some interesting content, we will definitely do our best to leave you a comment.
Now this is just a test, so we have to have a cutoff date just in case it doesn’t work or if it works too well and we get overwhelmed with comments. So let’s make the cutoff date July 15, 2009 and evaluate how it worked, and then decide if we should extend it.
Here is one more suggestion that will hopefully benefit any of you who decide to participate in our comment exchange. Why not visit the sites of the people commenting on our blog and leave a comment on their site as well? There is a chance that they are participating in this test too and they might leave you a comment back on yours as well. You have nothing to lose and you definitely will get more exposure.
UPDATE JULY 20, 2009 – We just wanted to thank everyone that has been leaving comments on our site and we have tried to return the favor to each of you. In doing so we have found lots of great sites that we never knew exisited. Since this is working so well, we will continue to visit anyone’s site who leaves a comment on our site. We will also try and return the favor on your site and hopefully we can build lots of longterm friendships in the process.
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Asswass on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 8:58 am
Hey Doug, nice to meet you. You’ll start getting comments on this blog eventually. But I don’t agree with you when you say that commenting on bigger blogs is better than new blogs. I’ve had my blog for 2 months now and I’ve received more traffic from other small blogs than from big blogs. Why? Because I started a friendship with those bloggers and now they are faithful readers of my blog. Think about it
Asswass on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 9:22 am
Sorry Doug, I misread your post. That’s great that you do believe that small blogs are as important as big blogs
Doug Dillard on Fri, 26th Jun 2009 9:44 am
Thanks for the comments Asswass. I absolutely agree that commenting on smaller blogs is actually better for starting to build your own blog community. It is also good to comment on larger blogs as well, as your comments have the potential to get seen by more eyes. Probably a combination of both is the best option if you have the time, but if you don’t have the time, I would go with the smaller blogs.
bbrian017 on Thu, 9th Jul 2009 8:44 am
I find your comment gets lost on larger blogs but perhaps that’s just me!
Curious Little Person on Sat, 27th Jun 2009 12:11 pm
Selfish Approach, but does work the small blogs! I’ve gotta agree
Cheers
Sandeep
Deneil Merritt on Mon, 29th Jun 2009 8:31 am
Well you surely got a plan. A little advice is after you leave a comment on the big blogs, comment on every blog that commented there. You will see a lot more comments and subscribers.
Doug Dillard on Mon, 29th Jun 2009 8:50 am
Deneil, I definitely have found that to be true… thanks!
Tycoon Blogger on Thu, 2nd Jul 2009 7:16 pm
This is one of my best techniques to gain quality traffic for my blog. I visit and comment on hundreds of blogs per week. Sure the backlinks are good, but making “blogging friends” is the best part. I have some wonderful loyal readers and I try to visit and comment on all bloggers that comment on my blog.
bbrian017 on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 9:59 am
Maybe I can start using some of these because I can’t get comments on my blog even if I paid for them LOL
Doug Dillard on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 10:29 am
Hey Brian… I think you need to send visitors directly to http://www.blogengage.com/blogger/ if you want comments. I think most end up at http://www.blogengage.com/ and then click off to other sites. I know that has happened to me.
bbrian017 on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 10:31 am
You’re right I should start using my blog url and not my social network!
That blog at blog engage is actually for guest blogging!
my blog is here http://www.seomkt.com
Thanks for the reply!
Brian
Extreme John on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 3:31 pm
Nice touch on this one guys, truth is I have always visited anyone that has ever commented on my sites blog, it only seems right.
I enjoy your blog so commenting here is no problem for me and hardly a task, Im more excited that I found it.
Doug Dillard on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 3:33 pm
Thanks John! I really like your site as well!
Extreme John on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 3:31 pm
Have you considered trying “CommentLuv”
bbrian017 on Thu, 9th Jul 2009 8:43 am
I heart CommentLuv it’s my fav 100%
Doug Dillard on Mon, 6th Jul 2009 3:35 pm
I actually have CommentLuv installed, but it was having issues with another plugin, so it is not activated at the moment. My programmer is suppose to have it fixed this week. I appreciate the advice
Jared P Little | The Money Cult on Mon, 20th Jul 2009 9:11 am
Damn, missed your cut off by a couple days but ironicly I came here to return the comment favor from my site pretty much what this post is about and figured what better post to post on then this one. Good advice here.
Doug Dillard on Mon, 20th Jul 2009 9:36 am
Hey Jared… thanks for stopping by, as well as leaving a comment. I totally forgot I put an expiration date in the post. I have just updated it and we will continue to return comments as it is a great way to network.
MichaelR on Fri, 7th Aug 2009 1:48 am
This is the first time I’ve heard about “comment exchange” and I think its an excellent idea. We only get about a couple of comments a week on our blog, I hope this comment exchange will works for us.
Okay time to post another comment to your “commentors”
Michael
Doug Dillard on Fri, 7th Aug 2009 9:27 am
Hi Michael… thanks for stopping by and posting. It is amazing the type of response you get when you post on other blogger’s posts… especially bloggers that you see posting on other site. Your blog seems to be a niche about one service, so I am not sure if you will get the sort of response broader niche sites get… but it might.
Isaac | GoBlogger on Sun, 9th Aug 2009 4:46 pm
Interesting idea. I usually visit the sites who comment on my blog when I have spare time, building friendship and returning the favor back. If I find that the site is new, I will visit it more often because my blog is also new.
Sire on Thu, 13th Aug 2009 2:42 am
I actually thought of this idea about a year ago and wrote a post called Do You Want More People Commenting On Your Blog? It turns out to be a pretty popular post and I’ve always stuck to the reciprocal comment policy on my blog.
I even started the F Group to reward those who decided to do likewise. Unfortunately it never really took off. I reckon they didn’t think they could keep up with it all, but it’s not really all that hard.
Sire´s last blog ..Updating The Update On Snap Dollars
Surender Sharma on Sat, 22nd Aug 2009 1:06 am
This is the best idea to become an loyal authority in blogsphere.
I was reading on another blog about commenting. I learnt many things from that article and one of them is that commenting on other blog is like to join a party. If you comment regular on other blogs you can popular on those blogs.This thing leads to you as a popular authority of the party.
What do you think about blog commenting is like you are joining in a party?
Surender Sharma´s last blog ..How to keep your blog Secure and active