Blog Commentsense

When you contribute your comments to other's Blogs, it is an opportunity to show your personality, expertise and gain exposure for your Web site. What many seem to not understand is that Blogs are about opinions and conversations not about one-sided desires for self-promotion. In the almost rabid quest to attain incoming one-way links to their Web sites, Blogs are being hit with generic dribble from marketers that serve no purpose other than reflecting the commenter's desire to gain a coveted inbound link. I have a handful of Blogs and each and everyone is moderated. By being moderated this means that any comments submitted need to be approved by me before being added to my Blogs for public viewing. My Blogs -- my call -- and I am very persnickety about what gets added to my Blogs by those I don't know. It's called quality control. A site visitor's comments do not see the light of day on my Blogs unless they meet the following criteria:n

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1. Their comment must include their name; at the very least their first name -- typed properly.
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2. Their comment must be specific to the post they are commenting on -- and I mean specific. General blah-blah-blah doesn't cut it -- comments must include detailed verbiage clearly about the post in question or it gets marked as spam. Comments like "I see your point of view but don't agree" without telling me why you disagree tells me you are just link baiting.
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3. Compliments are futile. Yes, we all love hear how great our site is and having our egos stroked by site visitors. But my ego doesn't not fall prey to those who try to compliment their way into gaining a link to their site from my Blogs. Only those compliments combined with thoughtful specific commentary will have a chance of being approved for viewing by my site visitors. It's all about the conversation!
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Between all my Blogs, minimally 200 "comments" each day are marked as spam because they do not meet the basic criteria above. Some of these comments are submitted by bots; while others are from naive marketers thinking that their incoherent typo filled grammatically incorrect ramblings will actually be approved for display thereby giving them that highly desired one-way link to their site that search engines look for. News Flash to Blog owners -- moderate your Blog and integrate the above standards as well. Doing so will help to increase the value and integrity of your Blog in the process. Otherwise you risk your Blog's overall worth being affected negatively by "comments" that are of no value to anyone. Commenting on Blogs is certainly a great way to gain exposure. But only when done properly and for all the right reasons integrating courtesy and common sense when doing so. If you don't have anything of definitive value to contribute and don't want to make the efforts mentioned above -- then don't waste your time or that of Blog owners.