WHAT MAKES A BLOG COMMENT GREAT??

More and more people are beginning to see leaving comments on other people's blogs as a great marketing opportunity. I recommend it highly and credit it with building my medical advocacy blog HonestMedicine’s visibility and name recognition. As I have pointed out before, my blog comments have brought the site lots of attention, including articles about it (here and here, to show you just a few), and recognition for being a "healthcare hero." (You can’t imagine how happy that made me!)

Soon I was being interviewed about my success with promoting HonestMedicine this way, and was asked to teach a class on the topic. As more people learned about my success with this promotional method, they would often ask me HOW, exactly, to write blog comments that get great results.

The truth is, lots of people have written about this marketing technique. But most of these bloggers write about blog comments solely as a way to bring traffic to one’s site.

I am essentially advocating the same thing: My blog comments also bring traffic to my site -- and to my clients’ sites. BUT THERE IS ONE BIG DIFFERENCE. Most online marketing experts consider getting people to visit your site to be the MAIN goal of commenting, while I concentrate on teaching you how to impress those who read your comments with the CALIBER OF THE INFORMATION you are providing in your comments – e.g., your expertise.

In other words, I am saying that blog comments, professionally and carefully written, can bring people to your site in the frame of mind to expect to LEARN SOMETHING IMPORTANT there. There will be other benefits, too: For example, if you're an author, you may find lots more people are buying your book!

I’m going give you my rules for leaving blog comments. Most of these are widely agreed-upon rules that you can find on many blog marketing sites. However, here I will also include information on how to make your comments unique, so that people will visit your site often and write about it, as well.

MY SEVEN RULES

1) The most important rule: Make sure your blog comments add to the conversation and are NOT SPAM. You NEVER want to be accused of spamming. Spam is a way to get people to visit your site for absolutely no reason at all. An example of spam is: “Great posting. Visit my site at www.spammerssite.com.” Don’t ever do this. It will just reflect badly on YOU. (NOTE: Spammerssite.com is NOT a real website!)