I’ve posted about blogging a few times lately and have a few more topics I would like to share my thoughts on with you so this post is going to be focusing on blog comments. Sorry to those of you who don’t blog, this probably won’t be very relevant although I would also be quite interested in hearing your thoughts on blog comments and whether as a non-blogger you leave them or not.
When I first started blogging, over four years ago, Cherry was just a few months old and I became completely absorbed into the world of reading blogs and commented on them regularly. Then as she got older and didn’t spend all day sleeping life got busier, then I had another baby and started another blog which required me to actually spend hours making things as well as choosing to home educate the kids so never having a minute to myself. Gradually reading and commenting on other blogs became a job that slipped further and further down the list. I know that it’s a very similar situation for the others who started around the same time as me which makes me feel a bit better about things!
These days I have about 15 blogs that I catch up on about once a week and stop in to leave comments, I join in with a couple of linkys where I will always go and leave comments with the other people taking part and maybe about once a month I try to have a comment session where I will go through my BlogLovin feed and visit new blogs to leave comments.
The last part doesn’t always happen though and I seem to have this niggling little thing telling me I’m a bad blogger for not visiting and commenting on other blogs often enough. It is after all a community and to be part of it you need to make an effort but lately I’ve also been wondering how important commenting on other blogs really is for the success of your own.
By success I mean link building, helping people discover you, getting your name out there etc. These aren’t important for people who are just blogging as a hobby but they become more important if you want to start earning money from your blog. There are lots of lists of things to do to increase your website traffic and leaving lots of comments is always on them, not just to try and get new people to discover you but to get lots of links to your blog out there, something which is good for building your domain authority score.
Now I know this sounds as if the only reason I feel like I should be commenting more is to try and benefit my own blog and I’m not going to lie, that is part of it, but it’s also because as bloggers we all love receiving comments and it’s nice to make someone feel good by commenting on something that have put a lot of effort into creating.
If we are honest though how many of us are only doing it in the hope we will receive a comment back?
If you regularly comment on a blog and that person doesn’t ever leave you comments in return then would you stop?
I guess that’s always the thing that is in the back of my mind when I receive comments. There are lots of good reasons to leave them, if the post is sponsored or a review post then when the people who commissioned the post reads it they might be looking for new people so it could lead to work, someone told me last night about Comment Luv using follow links so it rewards bloggers for commenting and of course the more you get your name out there the more people will get to know you so I think when bloggers receive comments from bloggers we all know it’s a bit of a two-way thing. Which is why when we receive them from non-bloggers it’s nice as we know there is no benefit to them.
Part of me wonders whether I should just turn them off altogether, that is definitely an option on my craft blog but then I don’t get many comments on there as it’s mainly non-bloggers that read it. I feel reluctant to turn them off on here as I really love the feedback I get for a lot of my posts, I always try to reply but again there are probably times when I haven’t so I really do apologise for that!
So I’m not sure there is a point to this long, rambling post. The answer to Should I Be Commenting On Other Blogs is a really personal one, I guess the answer it either yes if you enjoy it or yes if you have the time to comment on lots of new blogs each day but if you really don’t want to then don’t. Use that time to find a way to attract more non-bloggers to your website, focusing on Facebook can be a really good way to do that as if you are writing content that people will share on there then that has the potential to open up a whole new audience to your blog.
So now I would love to hear your thoughts.
How much time do you spend commenting and why?
Would you stop commenting on a blog if they never returned to visit yours?
Would you rather have a blog with lots of page views and no comments or lots of comments that were only there because you had left comments on their blogs?
Do you comment on blogs even though you don’t blog yourself?
Image – DTTSP
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