COMMENTS
EXCELLENT POST! I am in the process of adding a business blog to my site and this just ups the burning desire to have it implemented sooner and start blogging away. I was just this year that I realized the importance and power of blogging although it's been around for some time now. It's also interesting to see just how many companies STILL do not use it. With the social media craze surrounding so many, it may still take some time for some people/companies to get it right. I also downloaded the e-book and was very pleased to see this post as part of the e-book.
This is all so true, I just redesigned my restaurants website with blog capabilities and love it. I can add fresh new content at any time and post specials and pictures. The blog lets me free write as if i was speaking to one of my customers, good article thanks Hubspot. Ya Six Pixels of Separation rocks.
Awesome post! I am new in blogging. Could you please tell me how can I find out how many sites are linking in to our blog? When any one leaves a comment to our blog post, does it increase our link? What are the criteria of keeping a comment on the post? I know I am asking a lot, but you are an expert to give me the answers. Thanks.
@Tahmina
Lots of good questions! I would suggest using Blog.Grader.com to evaluate your blog. It should help answer most of your questions.
Thank you!
Kipp
Kipp: This is a great post, and I love the sample section here from Mitch Joel. Many of Mitch's points remind of Adam Singer's analogy that "blogging is like going to the gym for your brain." That's why I love blogging because of the critical thinking, creativity, and researching I do to create and develop my posts. It's one of the most rewarding and challenging activities I've ever undertaken. How I wish I would have discovered and started this labor of love sooner ...
We Always learn from your blog posts. Thanks for sharing!
Question - we have noticed that there are increasingly more blog comments on our posts that look like genuine comments , seem too generic (can be used on any type of blog regardless of content) and a tell tale sign is usually that the name of the comment's author is something like "cheap mortgages" etc..
Do people normally delete/not approve these types of comments...? When people provide their website URLs, this results in your website/blog linking to their website... Which helps in their traffic and page ranking....
Or can you leave out their website if you do not want to provide links in this manner?
We are still trying to navigate best practices and would love to hear from you... And all The other readers
Thanks !!
@"Specialist Dental Group" - I personally spam generic comments that come from keyword laden posters. The intention is clearly to use blogs that forget to use a NOFOLLOW to send weight to the site. If the cpmmenter can't be bothered to provide something original, then I don't think they should even get a NOFOLLOWED link.
You contributed a considered question; if I could discern a name, I would rewrite your name instead of a keyword and include an editorial comment that the name is reworked, and include your business identification. I think it is rude to other readers to keyword load a comment signature. It's like introducing yourself at a party by the role you do, not your name ("Hi, I'm Used Car Salesman, and my wife here is Loss Insurance Adjuster"). I have asked a few authors of comments where I couldn't find a name, if I could have a name, and was met with a sufficient disinterest or abuse, that I don't ask permission any more: it's spam, or it gets a non-keyword name, or it is deleted as incourteous. This is spelled out in my comment policy - which recieves the most spam, for reasons that will become obvious in a second....
I am also affected by the search that users have done to find the blog. If it includes "blog" and "comment", then I assume they are hunting for a place to spam, and those, especially, get spam-dumped to Akismet. I have changed the default text on my blog, so that spammers mostly find the comment policy, to which blandly generic comments like "great article" are clearly spam, and clearly outwith the policy ;)
@Kipp - thanks for the blog and the thinking. Enjoyable. Adding you to my blogroll; already in my RSS Reader.
From a business perspective, blogging is a fantastic way to build customer loyalty.
@jeremy, thanks for your comments.
This is Moon from Specialist Dental Group (which is actually our real business name and website, and not just a keyword laden signature :)
Could you explain what a "No Follow" link is ? We are currently using Wordpress (used to be on Blogspot)... not even sure what trackbacks and pings are but we have this and have noticed that there are truncated comments sometimes that may be a result of this...
for some of the industry comments that are somewhat relevant, we usually approve the comment (even with the link) as we figured that as long as people took the trouble to comment on something that was somewhat related/relevant, this would be of more value than irrelevant or generic comments.. but we are still finding our way around..
our biggest challenge is to generate content on a regular basis.. but we currently try to relate our posts to matters of current interest, things in the news, etc :)
Happy Blogging and keep the comments coming ....
@Moon - see
Google's Matt Cutts for a *five year old* posting about using NOFOLLOW links to discourage spammers. It doesn't discourage them much, which is why CAPTCHA and Akismet are also important blogging tools for comments. WordPress automatically NOFOLLOWs UGC (User Generated Content == Comments)
Sign up your own blog for Akismet - it'll autoprune lots of spam.
If you want to see ruthless spam pruning in action, look at SearchEngineLand and at the way Danny Sullivan and crew mercilessly prune keyword laden comments; these guys professional lives are tied up in search engines and their behaviour, and they think there are good reasons to prune hard.
Kipp, thanks for the great info. I am putting a similar post together but with clients using LinkedIn. With over 100 responses to how they have used LI to obtain business and generate leads, a lot of outcomes are the same as yours. Thanks for the good read.