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How (Not) to Get Links and Influence People

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006
2 Comments

I’m not going to claim to be some sort of expert on blog promotion. I knowingly break several of the rules on how to have a really popular blog. If you’ve not guessed yet there is a but coming sometime so without any thought for the rules of English grammar here it is:

BUT one thing I won’t do is turn up on someone else’s blog and post a random comment without any relevance to the post. I won’t post a comment with a link to something I’ve done that isn’t relevant to the original writers comments or one of the other comments. Why not?

  1. It’s rude: would you go to a talk on widgets and when asked if anyone has any questions stand up and ask if anyone wanted to read about you’re spangly new
  2. You’re wasting you’re time and mine: odds are I’ll delete the post. Takes me just one click. You’ve wasted more of you’re time than mine.
  3. It’s spam: you hate spam when it turns up by e-mail. Well you just became a spammer not a blogging guru.
  4. This isn’t a hit factory: you probably won’t see you’re traffic rocket over night. This blog gets enough visitors to keep my ego happy. But not that many. So the odds are though you won’t see a sudden surge of visitors. I may nip over to see what you’re blogging about before I delete you’re comment. So you got one hit that doesn’t come back. That isn’t how you build traffic. You’ve just become part of the noise of modern life. I won’t be coming back.

BUT (yes it’s But abuse night here at Too Many Ideas) all is not lost!

If you’re going to comment find a post to comment on that you have something meaningful to say about or just post a quick message to say hello. If I want to find out who you were I’ll follow the link to you’re profile and then to any blogs listed. Not quite the direct link you wanted but maybe avoiding the quick fix will work out. If I like what you have to say I’ll come back. I’m a pretty generous linker. You might get a mention in a post or even a link in my blog roll.

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2 Responses to How (Not) to Get Links and Influence People

Mark Thursday, October 5th, 2006

You really got going their Christa :-)

I've only ever replied by e-mail to a comment when it clearly needed a private response. Normally I think responses to comments in the blog, especially questions, can save someone else asking the same thing or wondering what the answer was but not asking. The only down side is that unlike good forum software blogs don't tend to offer a comment/post watching facility to let you know when someone replies.

Christa Thursday, October 5th, 2006

Couldn't agree more.
I don't even understand why some people spend time making comments that has no relevence to the subject since no one will give a damn about their blog if they don't have any kind of opinion about the subject in question.

The only reason for me to click on someone elses blog link in a comment is if the comment is interesting and I want to know who the person is. If it's unrelated to the blog post, it goes straight in the spam pile.

There's another thing that I don't understand about some blog owners. It happened that I've made comments frequently on a blog and in return the blog owner will send me an email with a reply that they could put down in their blog as a comment. I'm sure there's lots of people who never return to read the comments in a post they've already been to, but I'm among those who do read more than my own words. So it feels a bit one-way when you never see the blog owners replies in their own blog among the comments.

Ok...now I've written a blog post in your blog...LOL...Sorry, Mark. You're welcome to do the same back :D

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