Are your comments killing you?

Posted by stuart as blog commenting, blogging, blog

Not the comments on your blog, the comments you leave on other blogs.

There’s been a bit of talk in the Internet Marketing sphere of late about personal branding. Personally, I tend to subscribe to the SlightlyShady view that it’s all a bit of a wank, but we do need to be aware of the image we’re portraying to the wider world.

It’s a well known fact that I don’t spend a lot of time commenting on other blogs (sorry to my online friends, I do love you all, really!). I’m sure if I could find the time I could increase my readership/feedcount/alexa rank or whatever other metric you’d like to think of. One thing I do when I do comment on blogs (not always successfully)  is to portray a sense of intelligence and thoughtfulness.

Think about this for a minute. If you’re reading someone else’s blog, and you come across a comment like this:

LOL, good info here. loved reading this post.

Are you likely to follow the link to have a look at that blog?

I didn’t think so. However, if you read an insightful comment, maybe a bit witty, something that someone has actually put a bit of thought into, you’re much more likely to follow the link and take a look at the blog of the person who left the comment.

So spell check your comments, read them through one more time before hitting the “Post” button, and ask yourself what this comment says to someone who’s never heard of you or your blog before.