It's been a few years since we've covered the topic of comment marketing, but that doesn't mean it's out of date. There are clever, intentional ways to market yourself and your brand in the comments sections of sites, and there's less competition now than ever before. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand details what you can do to get noticed in the comments and the benefits you'll reap from high-quality contributions.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about comment marketing. We talked about this actually five or six years ago, but it is time for a refresher because there are a lot of things that have happened in the world of online marketing, so this deserves a new take.
Comment marketing has not lost any of its power and influence. In fact, because fewer people are doing it today than were five or six years ago, especially in the digital marketing world, it's actually become increasingly influential. There's a limited number of blogs and communities in most sectors and spaces that have audiences that engage in the comments, but where they do, you find incredible levels of participation, of amplification, of opportunities for press and for links and for social following. I'll show you how that works, and then I'll talk about some tactics in terms of how to create great comments and a strategy to build around it.
How do comments help me/my site?
So, first off, why do comments help so much, and how do they help? Well, it turns out that if you leave great comments on other folks' sites, they may lead to visits to your website through your profile, through links that you leave, through people clicking on your profile and then following that link, which can lead to links in future posts by the authors of the site where you commented or in future content pieces created by people who read that site.
If they see that your comment is particularly insightful, it brings up a great example, shows off a resource that is sorely lacking, especially when you are either leaving links or commenting about things, if you do so in a very respectful, diplomatic way. For example, one of the best strategies, best tactics I've seen for leaving a comment with a link in it is to say, "Hey, I want to make sure that this blog accepts links in the comments, but I figured I should point to X. Editor, feel free to remove if links are not appropriate." So that way you're saying, "Hey, I recognize that dropping a link in a comment could be a little sketchy."
Or you could say something like, "We've actually been doing this on our site. If you go to our website, you can check out the link via my profile." So you're not even leaving it in there. You're saying go check it out from there, then you can see this other thing that I want to show off in relation to the content here. But those can lead to great links to your site in the future.
Commenting can also lead to indirect links through exposure and exposure itself, meaning things like you leave consistent quality comments, people start to recognize you. You sort of see that profile picture again and you go, "I know that brand from somewhere or I know that person from somewhere. I have some positive association with them adding value." That can lead to a better chance of engagement with you, your personal brand, or your corporate brand in the future, which can mean a better chance of future conversion.
It can also lead to social following growth. So you have lots of great comments. People will check out your social profile from your profile in those comments, and that can often lead to follower growth. You can, of course, juice this a little bit by choosing rather than linking to your personal site if you so choose, you could link directly to the social account that you are trying to promote or grow followership with.
So if you say, "Hey, I'm trying to grow my Facebook page. I'm going to make my Facebook page my profile link in here." That works just fine. That can grow your Facebook audience. That may be how you're best reaching your audience. Or it could be you're doing it on your website or through Twitter or Instagram or another way. But all of these things basically follow the same format. People see those comments. If they're engaging and they draw them in, it can lead to very good results.
What makes a comment great?
Basically, every single one of these start with you must leave consistent, high-quality, great comments. Greatness in a comment means a few things.
I. It's gotta be on-topic
Meaning that while you may have lots of very interesting things to share, if you go off topic, you will, even if you provide great value, tick off the moderators of the community. You will often turn off a lot of folks who are reading those comments. It's just not what people are there for. So you've got to keep it on-topic.
II. Respectful to the author and other commenters.
I say respectful because what I don't mean is you can't disagree. In fact, I think it is great to say, "Hey, I really love this post. I think you made some great points, but point number three and four that you made here or this one and that one, I disagree with and here's why. This is my experience or I have this data or I conducted this survey or I want to show you this information, go check it out over here." That is just fine. As long as you are respectful and kind, I think you're in a great position to disagree and to add value. Disagreement actually does add a lot of value.
III. Provides unique value
Speaking of value, we are trying to provide unique value here. We want to provide unique value through our comments. When I say unique value, what I mean is you can't just say things that were already in the post itself, things that have already been mentioned in other comments, or things that are sort of common knowledge, anyone could find them out or they're instantly recognizable, they're sort of already known.
We want insight or tactics, help, context, examples, data, whatever it is that is not found in the original piece or through common knowledge. That's what makes a comment truly stand out. That's what makes people vote up a comment, click on the profile, go check this person out. They seem really smart and intelligent and helpful.
IV. Well-written
There are a few other items. We want to be well-written — so grammar, spelling, language issues.V. Well-formatted
So you should use spacing and paragraphs, bullet points if they're available in the markup effectively to try and convey your point so that it doesn't just look like a bunch of jammed together words and sentences. If you have a very long run-on paragraph in a comment, it can turn people off from even starting to read that.
VI. Transparent
Finally — this is important — transparent. So you should not try and pull the wool over people's eyes in a comment. We want to not hide our intent or our associations. Even if you are doing comment marketing specifically as a commenting strategy to try and attract people, you can be totally up front about that.
You can say, "Hey, full disclosure, I work for company X, and I wrote this piece, but I think it's relevant and helpful enough that I want to bring it up here. So, with permission, hopefully I'm linking to it. Editor, feel free to remove this link if it's not appropriate. Here's why I'm linking to it and here's what the value is that it provides." Now you've been transparent about your intentions and motivations, your associations, what you're doing. You will get a lot more both forgiveness and leeway to leave comments that are valuable if you do that.
Building a comment marketing strategy
Final thing, if you've decided, based on the couple things we've talked about here, that comment marketing is something you want to try and engage in 2017, or for the future, I would urge you to build a true strategy around it, not just tactically say, "Well, maybe a couple of times I'll leave a few comments."
That's fine too, but you can get the most benefit from this strategy if you truly invest in it by following a process like this:A. Determine the goals you want to get out.
So maybe that's build exposure to get links. Maybe that's to grow a social audience. Maybe it's to try and get influencers to engage with you so that they become brand proponents for you in the future.
B. Create measurements
You want to build some measurement around that. Comment marketing is tough to measure, very, very tough to measure because you can't see how many people saw your comment. You only see the results of it. But you can look at traffic and visits that are referred to your site from the site on which you left the comments. You can look at growth in your social following. You could look at new links from sites in which you engage with in comment marketing, those kinds of things.C. Identify list of sites/communities for engagement
Then you should identify a list of the sites or communities that you want to engage with. Those sites and communities, it is best if you don't say, "Hey, I'm going to try and leave one comment this year on each of 200 communities." Not valuable. Pick the top 10. Choose to leave 15 to 20 comments on each of them. You want to build up a reputation in these communities. You want that consistency so that people who are in those comments and the authors of them, the influencers who write them, consistently see you in there and build a positive association with you.D. Research
Then you want to do some research. I'm urging you not to comment the first few times you read through it. Go through the backlog, look through their archives. Read and see what other people have commented on, see what other people have enjoyed and appreciated, see what comments do well and get noticed, see what the community is like.E. Create an alert system when new content is published
Then create some sort of an alert system. This could be subscribing to updates via email or using RSS or if you follow them on Twitter and you get pinged every time they launch a new post, whatever it is, because early comments tend to do best. Right when a post is published, if you can comment in the first, let's say, 30 minutes to 3 hours, that's the best opportunity you're going to have to be seen by the most people reading that post.F. Use social to help amplify/spread your comments
Finally, I would urge you to use social media, especially Twitter because that's where most publishers are, to amplify and spread your comments, meaning you go leave a comment and it's really high-quality, then tweet, "Hey, I just left a comment on @randfish's post here about blah, blah, blah." Now I'm probably going to see that via Twitter, even if I don't see it via my comment alert that I get through email, and I'm going to know, hey, this person is not only promoting their comment, they're also promoting my post. That's great. Now that builds further engagement with the people you're trying to reach.
All right, everyone. Hope you give this comment marketing strategy a spin. If you have other tips, things you've seen be successful, feel free to leave a great comment in the comments down below, and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
I think I'm entitled for saying few things about commenting...
The first one is that I comment on blogs and websites not thinking I am doing comment marketing, but because I really feel the need to comment on something. It may sound ·cheesy", but actually is the only valid way for also having the advantages of good comment marketing; people is not stupid and catch immediately if someone comments for achieving some sort of personal brand advantages or not.
Then, along the years I discovered few things that work for me and that makes my comments, for instance, amongst the most thumbed up here on Moz:
To conclude, as a marketer, I consider comment marketing more as a personal branding tactic than SEO, Digital PR or even Link Building. Through comment marketing, in fact, we can propose ourselves as expert in our field in a place where our audience is present and active.
And the more helpful are our comments for all the readers, the higher will be the positive attitude the common audience the blog/site and us share will have toward us, hence opening great opportunities in terms of collaboration, work, clients, speaking gigs and being asked to express our opinion about topics related to our business and interests.
Just checked your profile. 16,000+ points. OK, respect!
But question for you: How on earth do you find the time?
<added>
Let me take this opportunity to give Rand kudos for this WBF - great stuff, Rand!
Damn! I should have used another post to do this rather than editing this one :-) Oh, never mind. I'll never get to 16,000 anyway.
I'm on Moz since 9 years.
Moreover you earn thumbs up also when writing posts and giving good answers in the Q&A, which may be considered a facet of comment marketing, just think to Quora)
Writing a post - a MOZ grade, quality post of 5000 (or whatever) words with some really useful content - is, I fear, an option beyond the abilities of the mere mortals among us.
If you have experience in online marketing, you can earn points in Moz Q&A by giving answers to questions. You get more points if your answer is chosen as the 'good' answer.
Funny video. The most important thing is linkbuilding, that's all.
A. Goal — I'm just doing this for a Moz t-shirt.
E. Alerts — posts here are published around the same time I get to work, grab a coffee and do my daily routine.
2 out of 6. Not bad.
And more on alerts, two of my favorite tools for monitoring mentions of our brand, our competitors and relevant subjects:
mention.com – a SaaS for monitoring the web, a really good one. Daily reports, real time in-browser feed and etc.
notify.ly – slack bot. this one is awesome for instant reactions. Very convenient and fast way to get notifications.
A: Ha!
B: Convenient :-)
Tools: Good ones. I also like https://moz.com/researchtools/fwe/ (the alerts in there work so much better than G alerts for me, and aren't quite as noisy, for me, as Mention's b/c they don't include social)
Looks interesting. Does Feed Authority metric applies to social signals. As you said they create a lot of noise, so it's either on or off for them. If there was a way to track only viable social mentions, or at least unique ones (no retweets, no mentions of bots spamming articles from search engine land) that would be awesome.
So the power of comments beyond just marketing: I just watched the WBF, went through the comments, saw this one, had a laugh and then saw your reply Rand. Then I went to FWE to check out if anything's been mentioned about my company. Low and behold, an article was written in Forbes about us on Tuesday and I had no idea. So if it weren't for your WBF and this comment, I probably would have missed that mention for at least another week.
Also, this tells me I need to do a better job of brand monitoring. Good thing there's a great tool in Fresh Web Explorer!
@Igor - TShirt is great... .but one participating in MozCon is MUUUCH better. Right?
one thing at a time :D
Peter, since you have more than 2000 points, I assume that you've already received your swag package. Commenter to commenter, what's in that package, besides a Roger plushie and a water bottle? :)
Honestly... first 500 points was hardest. But these days i don't have enough time for here.
And i was participating in local conference with @Igor in Bulgaria. It's called "OA Conf". Maybe this year we can see each other.
I'l be there. 31st of March. Already working on my presentation :)
What is OA Conf? I tried to google it but that doesn't seem to bring up anything relevant. What is the URL for the event?
Sure: bulgaria.oaconf.com
It's the biggest (and may be even the only one) digital-marketing conference in Bulgaria.
Enjoy the shirt ;)
https://gyazo.com/47183dda0c458420e27383f734f84256
Igor, when I read the title of the post, you were the person who actually sprang to my mind who does this really well, atleast on Moz you have become one of the people I expect to see in every comment thread with something ontopic and actually provoking more conversation.
aww yiss!
Thanks, Thomas. It's one of the few communities that has real comment section, which is rare today. And for me it's the best place to test my opinions – either I get a confirmation on some of my thoughts, or someone corrects me, always a win-win.
Well done on achieving your goal, onto the next t-shirt now? I have to admit I am keen on the "Moz Swag" but at my current rate I think it will be a number of years before I get there
took me a year to get here, so 3 more years for a swag bag. Sounds like a proper way to spend 3 years :D
Hahaha. Congratulations, Igor! Enjoy your shirt :)
Thanks for checking out WB Friday this week all -- my questions:
For me, Reddit and Hacker News have both held real value, as has Inbound.org (though, as a cofounder, that might be cheating). Earlier in my career, I got tons of value (and traffic) participating across the SEO blogosphere, but my schedule's made that a bit harder of late.
BTW - one pro tip - if there's no comments on a post, even if it's an older one, it can still pay to be the first/only comment. I've seen a surprising amount of traffic flow through those "only comments" (even if it takes a couple clicks to profile page and then to the commenter's site).
We manage a number of blogs for our clients. Besides regular promotion (social media & a bit of link-building), I encouraged commenting for added exposure. We've been struggling a bit with commenting. This is something we haven't been actively pursuing, so comments aren't always placed on the right sites (there's not really a point in leaving a comment if no one's gonna read it,
Disclaimer: I (personally) comment because I want to connect with people with whom I share the industry & learn new things.
1. My great opportunities were mostly personal successes (e.g. I was invited to contribute on a site, I managed to connect with an industry expert I follow, I put my content in front of the right people, etc.) - this generally happens if you comment often on the same platform (as you already mentioned).
2. There are a few things that our team did and works:
3. Moz has a great community :). Half of the time I spend here is reading comments. I also think Quora can offer a lot of value, especially if your a SaaS company, because it gives you the chance to explain your service better & obtain qualified leads.
Also, depending on your niche, I think that sites like Listverse, with active communities, are great. Articles like "10 Shocking Scientology Conspiracies" are thought provoking and welcome valuable comments that almost always could benefit from additional sources.
Hey Rand & Moz Community,
Very interesting topic for WB Friday! I came across 'Comment Marketing' last year when I attended a Growth Hacking Seminar in Venice, Italy, and have tried it out myself over the last year and have received some remarkable results for the travel startup I'm currently working for.
Working with a startup within the travel and yachting industries, it was important for me to integrate within communities related to travel. I researched the internet and found plenty of forums, groups and communities on sailing websites, Facebook, Reddit and Quora!
Since integrating into communities on these channels, I've been able to increase referral traffic from these websites by 70% in just the last year. If you've not tried it yet, I definitely recommend that you do.
It was highly necessary for me to become integrated within the communities first and become a known contributor within the group - which takes TIME. I would suggest spending at least 6 months being an active member within the group before advertising ANYTHING. Communities have rules, meaning that you must abide by them in order to gain the community's respect. From experience I can tell you that I've been kicked out of groups straight away for creating advertorial posts and comments and honestly would not recommend you start this way as it is even harder to re-introduce yourself to the community.
Tips:
- Find a group
- Introduce yourself (not your company) - open up to your community and the community will most likely engage with you
- Become an active member by giving advice and insightful points of view (the more you comment and engage, the more visibility you will get - especially on Facebook)
- Help out with the mods (if you have a little extra time)
- After 6 weeks write a post that indirectly hints that people should visit your website (it works!)
I would recommend participating in Quora, Reddit and Facebook, you just need to find the topics/groups/communities that are most relevant to what you're offering. I also use an alert system - 'If this then that' IFTTT that will send me an e-mail as soon as someone posts about boating on Quora, which gives me the ability to answer first! Since implementing these alerts I've noticed that traffic to the website from Quora increased by 80% in just two months. Give it a try!
As a long time Moz lurker I'm glad to see a focus on commenting, I feel its often a forgotten about marketing tool.
I've personally had a lot of results from small to medium blog commenting (instead of larger sites) as each comment seems to glean more attention. I've even see posts from 2+ years which I've commented on gaining new traction after posting on social. Whilst first is always best, its definitely the be all and end all.
A personal success story resulted in a publisher picking up my work on a blog that hadn't been updated in 2 years, which resulted in 3 books deals for me! I offered some advice to other readers on a slightly different take on the message in the post to better suit a wider market. A publisher stared a full on dialog through the comments before reaching out to me directly.
However, I would love to see some more focus on the grey area between social and commenting; the reddit style boards, and forums. They're great for backlinks, but the community offers a massive potential for personal growth.
First off, Rand -- loved the WBF! We actually were just beginning to talk about a new comment marketing strategy for our company. It's been about 5 years or so since we last really engaged with it. Also, to add to Rhys' point, one thing that's surprised us with grassroots marketing is the longevity comments can have -- especially in an age when comments are pretty disposable.
In our space, there are fewer websites with high-engagement comment sections. And yet, our clients are so hungry for great content. Our early participation was just to join the community. So when we periodically get leads from these comments it shocks us (in a happy way! As I'm sure you were with book deal). Three things we'd just like to add:
Even though it's not a comment section with a blog. I found this comment marketing works on Reddit. If you look at each thread on /PPC as a blog post. I won't comment on everything but over the last 18 months I've made a ton of comments and became known as the person with a high level of knowledge on how to hire, train and grow a small PPC team. Or how to take over an account from another agency and build in processes.
Agree about the "only comment" but also it raises your profile for helping someone out and or knowing the new answer to odd or unique question. Never be afraid to leave a comment.
Thank you very much, Rand! Great post, as always :) Without a doubt, writing good comments can be a good strategy to grow your project. Today, I think it's also very important to do it in social networks. It's a very powerful tool to get your website to new audiences (without spamming, of course). Thank you again!
I'll be honest, I'm a lurker... I hate myself for it, as I know it's not exactly enhancing the community by sitting here quietly - but hey - new year, new me, right?
I'll try my best from now on Rand! :)
There's plenty of pieces you guys put time into that get me thinking so I'll put some time aside to share my 2 cents!
I just think that in the online world it's important to distinguish comment marketing and commenting when you have something to add or share with the author of the certain post that you found to be interesting for whatsoever reason.
For example, I follow you and I check out every WBF post you publish on MOZblog because I like learning something new, but I don't leave a comment every time because sometimes I don't have anything to say...Maybe because I already knew what you were talking about or I simply find it stupid to say that I agree on something you said...
You see, the type of comments like "Great post", "You're right" and "WOW love this post" really gets me irritated.
How do you find this type of comments Rand?
Hello,
First time commenter her so... :)
Any who, this WBF gave a lot of good info and just keep doing a good job Rand.
My question for you is, since you mentioned that and I quote "if there's no comments on a post, even if it's an older one, it can still pay to be the first/only comment." So, my question is, if we have a article or blog post that is let's say 2-3 years or maybe 5 years old and has no comment on it, what impact, if such will commenting on this post (with a link to clients website) have on our profile or the website we are linking to?
I ask this because I heard somewhere that commenting on old blog posts and leaving a link to your website on such post is actually bad.
Hi Rand,
I did have some moments on Quora, when my comment drove a great amount of traffic to my site, BUT:
- it had to be a disruptive comment with great value, and it had to be in the top five answers.
- the question had to be fresh - asked just a couple hours ago.
At least, that's what I noticed.
I'm surprised noone has taken the opportunity to ironically force into a post an "editorially justified" link in their comment.
My question: Google largely views comment links as spam, from what I can read. Even if you follow the advice above and get a bit of traffic, are you hurting your SERP rankings?
It would seem to me that, unless your link profile is mostly comment links, Google would be more likely to ignore rather than penalize. If the comment community is functioning as a real world affinity group, 3rd party links will be shared as referrals to help fellow users with no financial motivation. The referred site has no control and should not be penalized.
I'm also reasonably sure the Rand was not suggesting this as a link building strategy. (or was he?) :2)
Sorry, Rand, but I’m totally not bought in that comment marketing is a great idea. Just a few reasons why:
Of course, there’s also the issue of spam. Encouraging the practice of comment marketing only encourages marketers to leave thinly veiled marketing messages as genuine comments.
Ultimately, there’s an opportunity cost associated with comment marketing—and I don’t think the practice is valuable enough for marketers to pursue. If we put focus on this tactic, we’re taking time away from SEO, content marketing, social media and other more scalable (and more proven) tactics. There are many other ways of more effectively building thought leadership, providing value to customers and building a brand.
Hey KC,
Some excellent points. I agree that they should give us pause before we jump headfirst into 'comment marketing,' but I have a few quick thoughts in reply:
So I think I can sum up with this: I would never charge someone to lead a comment-marketing campaign, but it works as a supplement to work that I'm already doing (reading industry blogs, building contacts, seeking community, etc.)
Hey Sam. All good points, but I wonder if comment marketing is more effective than other secondary marketing tactics. For me, that growing list already includes Quora, Reddit and Slideshare. I've realized that my main concern with comment marketing is that it's another thing to add to our to-do lists. But I'm not convinced it's as effective as other methods. If I'm doing comment marketing, then it means I'm taking time away from other methods.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and addressing each of my concern!
A good article because the comments are positive for a blog.
That if as the author says you have to put filters. In my blog I have seen that there are people who try to link to their web with any kind of things like linking sales of mandalas in an SEO article and worst of all that most of the time neither comment on the article itself, but sell In his comments again that product. Logically these go to the spa tray and I eliminate them.
Interestingly SEJ just decided to disable comments: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/weve-put-comme...
For Moz, the fact that you need to sign up to comment must screen some of the crap, but even then you still get a ton (I'm British ;)) of spam comments.
It's great to see a meaningful debate in comments sections, and to be part of them when there is something interesting to talk about, but there is soooo much crap I think I'd rather spend my time elsewhere.
If you spend 5 hours a week writing insightful comments on relevant articles, you could have written and published a piece of hero content on an amazing publication.
For me, that's a better (and more high quality) way to spend your time. :)
As a publisher, if you can get the engagement you get here, that can only be a good thing for the power of the page/domain in Search Engine's eyes so I understand why you'd encourage it. How much time does the team have to spend on comment moderation out of interest?
Do you think there is any problem when comments are badly written in term of spelling and grammar? I wonder, if Google are using some kind of Flesch score, whether they consider the whole page including comments in terms of readability? I guess they must.
An alternative comment marketing approach
Another aspect of comment marketing could be for the author to take the time to respond in depth. I took the time to respond to all of the comments here and ended up getting two enquires which potentially came via that article I wrote: https://moz.com/ugc/34-questions-you-should-ask-be...
Bon weekend!
Gill.
The thing is though that as a digital marketer or SEO you'd get enquiries from detailed and knowledgable comments in this blog. However, if you're a HVAC mechanic, accountant or commercial carpet cleaner, no amount of comments here will get you a single customer. You still do SEO on your site and come here to hone your skills ... but commenting won't lead to any business.
Not on a blog about digital marketing, but maybe on a blog/forum/group about fixing cars, finance or DIY in those cases?
My last point above was suggesting you write amazing content for blogs in your industry, then take the time to reply to comments and nurture the commenters like potential customers/know that people reading the comments could be so :)
That I can buy. :)
And I've seen it work first hand.
You're right about commenting vs writing blog posts,but both are compatible. Moreover, you can use comments also to test the potentialities of an idea, that you after can convert and develop into an original post or talk for a conference.
I did that several times, and it was very useful for testing the interest my ideas could aris
Yes good idea.
This truly works exactly as you've outlined! I was contacted after someone read one of my comments on Mike Blumenthals blog - and he's been significant client for the past 4 years. What a score! **BUT** That's not why I wrote that comment.
One thing your whiteboard is missing is "Be Authentic". Please don't write bland comments just for the purpose of "marketing yourself". Even if your intention is to be a major commenter, if you don't truly have anything valuable to contribute to the author or the community - please just move on without making a comment. Carve out some time each day or week to engage authentically. That's what it comes down to. Then, perhaps one day, an awesome new client will be inspired enough tor reach out to you.
Hi Rand,
I think it's really hard doing good comment marketing, your tips are really good.
On the other hand, I think in this days everyone comments on Twitter and Facebook, and blog comments are going down, the good part it's that: It's easier to take that spot on a medium-range blog, so I'm going to try this way ;)
Yeah - social has actually kinda cleared the way for more comment visibility, and spam filters have helped, too. I'm consistently surprised when I look at the referrers of active commenters' sites and see how much traffic the top few comments on popular posts/threads can send.
Great Video Rand,
I have been networking a lot using this strategy in the early days of 2017. Here are a couple of my takeaways:
Have a great weekend.
Hi Sir Rand
i have learned so many SEO things from your lectures and this WB Friday lecture was also very informative But i am surprised that you only mentioned the half part of Commenting Strategy, From User Side only.
you have not mentioned that "How google takes our comments? and How google deal with our links in those comments? " and you also didn't mention the safety points in Commenting like where to post a comment and where to not e.g.
Sites Using Clocking In Comments
Sites using Pagination in comments portion
Sites having Adults Content
Sites/site pages having low quality content.
Sites/pages having so many OBL already.
etc.
Looking for your kind reply about your thoughts.
thanks
Hi Rand,
What a great WBF it is, after reading this post got myself quite slow in comment posting. Despite all the benefits has been said in this post, there is one another benefit that comment posting have is jobs offer, which, one of my friends Shalu usually gets through the comment posting in Moz.:)
OK, my comment (this one!) is probably also what WBF is telling us NOT to do, but here's the unadulterated adulation anyway - "Hey Rand, WBF is one of the coolest things out there! Keep up the super work!"
Great WBF covering almost all aspects of Comment marketing.
Well I. It's gotta be on-topic - This is extremely important as otherwise your comment will be regarded as spam.
You have always to add value to the conversation and add information about the topic that is not mentioned in the post or write something that you did that reinforces what the author is saying or disprove it with evidence.
Both ways you can attract attention
It's not Friday without Whiteboard Friday.
Great WBF as always!
Very true. I make it a part of my Friday..even as a person that does paid all day. Good to see what the other half of the world is doing.
Friday is special Day for prayer, Friday after my prayer, come office and open moz for WB. WB Friday is really helpful for all newbie in this industry or experience.
It's not a great fit for every industry but Reddit is a superb place to practice this sort of marketing, if you are being too pushy/salesy you will get a lot of push-back from the community, and each subreddit has it's own community with their own individual rules.
I've found Reddit was a great place to do this over the last 18 months as well. I've even had a few people approach me about work and hiring me to work on their paid media. This was a huge bonus because I only really joined to manage a brand and make connections in PPC. I didn't even think of it as a place to find freelance work.
Rand - i will add also one "G" but can be subset of "C"
G - making connection with influencers there.
So IRL you can chase these influencers in social media, mails, etc. But contributing to their community is one of easiest way to make connections. Of course quality of contribution is also important. One quick example is Moz and that's why community here is so valuable.
A nice tutorial at the beginning of the Year.
For me commenting is like helping others and giving all the info i remembered reading different blogs. And Yes blog commenting increase your brand name and presence in your Community. So keep reading and keep commenting :) :)
Howdy Founder,
It's been a great to see a WB Friday edition on content marketing topic. I want to share something,
Actually, most of people are commenting just because of link building tactics, but that was not right marketing tactic. "Awesome Post", "Thanks for Sharing", "Wow, very meaningful post " - Most marketers use this type of words for commenting, they are trying to appreciate and get backlinks for website/blog - Worthless. But the real marketing has to do with sharing meaningful opinions as well as ideas in a discussion format of related topic in order to encourage interaction, make connections and also earn exposure. If we use blog commenting with right strategy, then we build a strong presence that can generate traffic and leads for months and even years to come.
Am I Right Or Am I Right.!
What i do - Keep giving answers (If I know the answer) to those who are doing questions in comments.
Thanks!
I think for a lot of people that have comment marketing in mind, they get hung up on the marketing aspect of it and forget to be themselves. Being an active contributor that is willing to share thoughts and advice is worth a heck of a lot, as long as it looks and feels natural. Otherwise it can look awkward or spammy.
Anyway, great WBF Rand. It prompted me to comment! ;)
Being yourself is key. You want to help someone and give feedback first and foremost. It's about helping the other person than marketing second. You can't get that order wrong for this to work.
Hello Rand!! Excellent post as always!! Indeed I want to ask you something about this topic. Is it real that the more comments you get in a post, the more the post will rank in Google for SEO?
I read this before in a spanish blog some time ago.
I want to share you an experience. When I post a product and people make comments about it , it becomes magnetic to other people and they begin to comment and comment. This phenomenon is very common in channels like YouTube. You can see that people even fight between them via comments haha.
Thank you Rand! My fridays are not the same since I know "WBF" :D Have a great Friday!!
Hello, Rodri-GO, In Youtube, comments is an excellent ranking factor, that´s why tons of comments are fake, made by the own owners of the channels. In blogging...? You must ask, what came first "the egg or the chicken".
Hi Rand,
Great post man.
I have been doing this stuff from last few years. But was not knowing that It's a Comment Marketing and i can use this medium very effectively for my own marketing.
Thanks for teaching those great tactics. Will surely implement and explore.
Cheers!
Suresh
I am not using comment marketing as a tool for gaining links or any social influence before checking this. I read most the time about the people doing spam by comment posting, so i stooped working on that. Now I can rethink about the same after checking this useful video. Thanks for the valuable tips.
Just a quick one @Rand. Does sequence of a comment really matter? i.e A person who is the 1st one to comment compare to the one who comments 100th. You reckon that link juice will be a lot lesser for the latter one?
I have also seen commenters are also using bit[dot]ly to track links clicks when they leaves the comments.
Here is screenshot link [https://imgur.com/a/lyeR6] i have captured from ahrefs where someone using short url to track every visit. So what do you think?
hey
nice and informative topic about Comment Marketing. but there is a problem. most of the moderators are not going to approve the comment with link.
Well i am use to do comment marketing but the ID which i have using are multiple and the schodo name is multiple, my question is that its a right way to do commenting or i can do it on original name? like "This is Noman from XYZ Co. here i can help you a lot on specific topic".
Way to break it down Rand. I appreciate the timing of your material this week. Thanks a million.
Comments which are related to our blog pots topic is good. We also get lots of commets many times, in there some are giving positive & negative reviews of our blog topic. so that we can make a good platform for discussion also regarding some exact topic.
Há tempos essa é uma forma de interagir, contagiar e aumentar a eficiência do Marketing online.
Alguns dizem ser eficiente apenas para conseguir backlinks, e é quando bem feito, porém vai muito além.
This is not so much a comment but an open question for the Moz community. When it comes to comment marketing is it best to target sites that have a lot of individuals already doing comment marketing like Quora, or is i better to go with more niche sites where the community is smaller and there isn't as many individuals already doing comment marketing?
Hi Rand, good videos as usual.
Comment marketing has been and it will always be a legitimate way to get in touch with people. Especially when the information that you provide in those comments are a nice addition to the information from the post itself.
And I find it to be one of the simplest ways to connect. No need to sign up on forums, or complete that and that, most of blogs allows you to comment with your Name and Email or even Facebook account. And I believe is a very good way to connect with the author!
I mean, I believe that if you want to create a connection with a blogger interested in your niche, the best way to reach that person is through a comment (unless you have to say something private ofc).
Why? First, because it is a bit more personal and less pushy than trying to outreach on email, and second because people love to receive comments. I mean, who doesn't? You feel happy when your community is growing, and you know that a good comment can be useful for your readers as much as your content. And that leads to more engagement on your website and the ball is rolling.
Now I have a question to ask you guys, hopefully will get some replies. :D On the other end of the spectrum, as a webmaster that wants to encourage people to come and leave meaningful comments and grow the community, what do you believe it's the best platform to do that? Do you think self hosted works better, Facebook comments or maybe Disqus!?
Thank you
Hi, my experience is not good with comments, I received 80% spam on my website if I let the comments open.
Hi Sushilkin,
Do you have a spam filter active? What CMS are you using? Have you tried a social comment system (like facebook comments)? :)
Cheers
Great post Rand. I'm a member of a few Facebook communities that regularly hold comment ladders. Unfortunately, many of these comments are never really valuable and don't extend beyond 'Wow! Keep up the good work!'. Sharing now!
Hey Rand
Awesome as always...!
What about the length of comment? I mean if a comment is lengthy, aren't there increased chances of ignorance?
Let's say we have three discussion points for this session. Would it be good to make three comments or a single one will be better?
What i think turns out to be good in comment marketing is:
1. Address the person with his/her name when commenting. Its quite natural. People would be more interested to respond. it's a sign of respect.
2. Maintain a signature at the end.
Afraz
Greate post i also feel that comment is a good thing and also many webmaster comment in other article to get backlinks , they don't focus on this point that a good an valuable comment that help article can build a good audience .
Thanks for the post, Rand. As always, it was a good read! Blog commenting is a good way to build your brand, but it is not, in my opinion, as effective as other forms of online marketing. Besides, the boom in social media marketing and audience engagement through social posts has, in a way, replaced blog comments. Let’s see what 2017 holds for comment marketing.
TGIWBF! :)
Thanks, Rand!
in comment marketing 5 tips must be consider:
1- Determine goals
2- Provide value.
3- Be consistent
4- Comment on posts that are in Google’s top 10 search results
5- Leave a signature
Thanks for posting on this topic, Rand. It's very timely for me as I've been studying the topic over the past few days. I had noticed the site owner of one of my emulated website's had used comments to build some links. I thought I should consider doing the same, but did not want to risk spamming a comment section.
The fine line can be difficult to locate at times. Thanks for sharing your ideas about how to utilize comments.
Thanks Rand for very useful post, I have started blog commenting few days ago and I am getting good traffic from those websites.
Rand,
If you want to build company brand awareness rather than personal brand. Do you think it's acceptable / unacceptable to blog comment as a company brand name instead of your full personal name?
I'd appreciate anyone else's opinions as well :)
I've commented on blogs for years, and have earned friendships with bloggers whom I respect. That has also helped me when I needed to do research or get answers or difficult questions or problems I'm trying to solve, because now I have someone to call for advice. I love being able to be a resource for them too.
I have also won a client from a comment on a blog. In this case, it was a well-known blog targeting the specific niche in financial services that my company targets. I commented to clarify some of the information in a particular blog post, respectfully disagreeing with the blogger. My client saw that comment, looked up our website, and followed me on Twitter. I reached out to her when she followed me and started a conversation. That led to an in-person meeting and a deal. They've been a client for 2.5 years now.
But it doesn't always work that way, and I don't think it should be the primary objective. The primary objective of commenting needs to be adding value to the conversation.
How can I sign up for this weekly blog post? Ideally I'd like to get an email reminder with a link. Thanks.
Hi MKhoury, thanks for the comment! :) We don't have a specific email newsletter for Whiteboard Fridays, but we do have an RSS feed you can subscribe to: https://feedpress.me/whiteboard-friday
You can also sign up for email updates for the blog as a whole here: https://feed.press/e/mailverify?feed_id=mozblog
I hope that helps a bit!
Thanks for the Post Mr.Rand Fishkin but in my experience, I have never experience a single strategy to increase traffic from comments. The comment is only profitable just to be present some where that`s it.
I am Sorry but this time I am disappointed.
Thanks Rand, Its really one of the great stuff as always. Comment Marketing is a kind of link building tactics if we can do in a perfect way then we can get good leads that's for sure.
But I think users make sure that they don't put signatures otherwise admin will banned you. So keep in mind be valuable & consistent for any comments.
Thanks a lot....
Really good read. There's a lot of people out there who should check this out and pay special attention to the section on being transparent. As you stated, being transparent builds trust and understanding. I remember reading about Kohls several years back and how their VP of Marketing was masquerading as a customer on their website and promoting without divulging who he really was.
Nice Post Rand.
I completely agree with last one, we can use social like twitter for comment speeding & spreading both.
Good stuff, Rand! I wonder if commenting on potential competitor's blogs (either real or perceived competitors, that is) would have a similar effect, or would more easily be taken as baiting them into an argument or attempting to siphon off their customers. Any thoughts on this? I have no doubt you've posted comments on others' SEO sites at some point in the history of MOZ -- curious about what approach you felt was most useful and respectful. (Or, conversely, if you found it to be of little value and why.)
Thanks in advance for eyeballing this and considering it.
Doing this on a competitor blog would be a tricky balancing act as you'd have to be super transparent about who you are and that might turn off some people from reading what you had to say. It's like going to their HQ and standing out front trying to tell everyone how awesome you are.
I'd stick with neutral places online that you can comment on and not go near the comoetitors to much.
I don't post on competitors' blogs but if I did I would not only disclose who I am but I would use the opportunity to praise the competitor and tell everybody how awesome he is (and say nothing about myself).
Apart from confusing the heck out of the competitor himself :) I reckon it would make readers MORE curious about checking you out by visiting your site.