As part of my ongoing Blog Challenges, I challenged my readers to Comment on 10 Blogs. The results by participants were amazing. Some had trouble with the number “10” and shrunk it down to 5. Others went nuts and increased the number and changed the rules to comment on 10 blogs a day or 10 a month. For the most part, people really enjoyed the challenge and it increased their awareness and importance of the blog comment.
Recently, I ran across that challenge and realized that I haven’t been commenting as much as I’d like to on other blogs. I’m so wrapped up in my own little bloggy world, I forget to open the door and see what others are doing out there and give my feedback out there.
Okay, that’s the challenge. Now, where do I start?
Finding Blogs To Comment On
I started close to home first. WordPress lists blogs that link to your blog in the Administration Panels Dashboard, and/or on the WordPress.com Blog Stats panel. The list is generated from Google Blog Search. I felt it safe to get back into the spirit of commenting by commenting on blogs that had something to say about mine.
You can manually generate the same Google Blog Search list by going to Google Blog Search or Google and type in the search command to list only blogs or sites that link to yours:
link:http://lorelle.wordpress.com/
Don’t be dismayed to find out that this also uncovers splogs, scrapers, and copyright violators. You can deal with them, too, but let’s focus on blogs with something of value said about your blog, so you can comment on theirs.
Open each link of interest in a new tab or window, going down the list until you have five or ten blogs open. Leaving the Google Blog Search list open, check out what these other bloggers have been saying about you and leave a comment or two.
Sometimes it’s hard to add much, especially to those who just blockquote and link and don’t add to the conversation. I tend to ignore those and concentrate on the bloggers who really have something to say. I thank them for the link, but I want to do more than just say thank you. So I read carefully and try to find something of value to add to the conversation and to help the conversation get going if it hasn’t started.
Did they overlook a point? Did they get something wrong? Maybe it’s enough that I agree with their point. Think about how to add to the blog conversation and encourage them and their readers to get talking.
If you haven’t checked out the list of incoming blog links for a while, you can spend days prowling through Google Blog Search’s links to your blog.
Comment on Your Reader’s Blogs
If you still want to comment close to your blog home, visit the blogs of your readers. They want you to visit. Why else would they waste their time entering their blog’s URL in your comment form and signing their blog comments with another link to their blogs?
Make time to prowl through some of your readers’ blogs and dig into their content to find something to comment upon. Tell them they are doing a good job, and even thank they for stopping by.
You never know what you will find when you go looking at other blogs. You might even find something worth blogging about, linking back to them and encouraging them even more to return to your blog and be a fan.
Finding Blogs to Comment on From Your Feed Reader
I monitor a lot of blogs from my feed reader, but I don’t always have time to go through every blog on the list. Now, I take time to go through the blogs I’ve overlooked recently to find subjects worth commenting on.
We can’t comment via our feed readers, so it does require opening them in new tabs or windows. Do this just like you did with Google Blog Search, opening multiple windows or tabs at one go, and then processing through each one, commenting and closing them to speed things up.
Comment on Social Bookmarking and Networking Sites
I also monitor social bookmarking and site submission services by category or search term or tag. I monitor “WordPress” and “Blogging Tips” on many of them. As I go through these, I look for post titles of interest and open those up to see what’s going on and find something to comment upon.
I comment on individual posts, but commenting on the social bookmarking and networking sites is another way to add more comments to the blogosphere conversation. There are so many now to choose from, and then there are things like Twitter where all you do is comment.
I used to hang out on social networking and bookmarking sites, commenting on links mentioned on Digg and elsewhere, but I don’t have time for that now. If you have the time, it’s a great way to add comments to the web and to increase the “social” and “networking” in your blogging experience.
Don’t forget that mailing lists, newsgroups, forums, and chats are another way to add your voice to the web and get more social with your blog and life.
Find a New Subject to Comment Upon
If you’ve exhausted all of these commenting forums, why not type in a search for a subject of interest, but not typical to your blog’s content. Hit Google Blog Search for stamp collecting, car repair, travel, or another subject that has intrigued you, and find some interesting blogs to comment upon.
You don’t have to comment only on blogs related directly to yours. Be a real human being and have interests outside your blog to keep you well rounded. A little off-topic conversation helps stimulate the brain and might give you new energy and motivation for your blog and work.
How Many Blogs Are You Going To Comment Upon?
Is it time for you, too, to start increasing your participation in the blogosphere? This year, I’m going to start making time within my week to “blog commenting” to get more involved with more bloggers. What about you?
Now, if only someone would invent a better way of easily monitoring blog comments. SIGH.