Posting Meaningful Comments

May 4th, 2007 by Cristina Favreau

Merriam-Webster describes the word ‘meaningful‘ this way:

1 a : having a meaning or purpose b : full of meaning : SIGNIFICANT
2 : having an assigned function in a language system

Thanks to Matt Huggins, from the Entrepreneurial Blog of Matt Huggins, for joining the conversation. He made this comment on “Creating Blogging Karma“:

All good points, Cristina. Glad to see you’re still following through on #3!

In giving suggestions on how to create blogging karma, point #3 was:

Post MEANINGFUL comments on other people’s blogs.

[Me, speaking strictly as a blog reader]
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m sort’a sick of reading pointless comments, like “Great point,” “I love your blog” and “Keep up the good work.”

If you’re posting comments on other people’s blogs as a marketing strategy, treat it like one. Be the professional expert you are, and show me WHY I would want to find out more about you by visiting your blog. I personally view commenting on blogs a privilege. After all, you — as the owner with full admin powers — could choose to delete my comment or block me from your blog altogether!!

Yeah, sure, you want me visit your blog thanks to your link, but PROVE to me you have something interesting and intelligent to say once I get to your site, by posting meaningful comments (see description above). Smart, dark, sarcastic and subtle humor works for me too — but that’s just me!

[Me, speaking strictly as a blog owner]
This doesn’t mean I don’t WANT you to leave short comments on my blog, but I can promise you — it’ll take more than one sentence to incite me to visit your blog and reciprocate.

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Category Blogging | Comments

  • Jenn, it sounds like some spam is getting through onto your blog. The example you provided sounds 100% like the spam emails that Akismet (a spam filter plug-in) catches on my WordPress blog. I see you're using Blogger though, and I'm honestly not aware if there is anything extra you can implement to help prevent spam like that. Hopefully you're not getting too many messages like that such that you can easily delete them!
  • Matt - you bring up an awesome point and I just want to clarify something that I touched on in my last comment. I don't mind links being attached to comments at all. In fact, if you look at my blog at the moment, I'm running an LOA experiment and everyone is talking about their particular business - so we've got links galore LOL!

    What I don't like is, I'll get comments that have zero relevance to the post. For example, I just had someone do a drive-by on Friday. And their post was: "I really like your blog. Come visit my blog - it's all about refinancing your home: www.linktoblog.com"

    Those are the comments that I take issue with. If you want to post your link and your comment is completely relevant to the conversation, I'm totally fine with that.

    I don't mind short comments either - or links in general. It's the comments that are obviously for the sake of the link that I take issue to.
  • I don't get many "link-only" comments on my blog, at least not in the same sense that Jenn seems to. Most are included as a link when you click on the commentator's name.

    I don't mind short comments on my own blog -- link or not -- for two reasons. For one, it let's me know that what I'm writing about is appreciated at least by one person out there. That's really the main reason that I first got into blogging.

    The other reason is that even if a link is included by the commentator, it WordPress automatically includes a "nofollow" attribute in the HTML anchor tag. This means that it won't get credit from Google (or other search engines that pay attention to this tag). Only my readers will know about the link and care about it if the site has any good info.
  • I couldn't agree more. I get a lot of comments like "I love your blog! Thanks so much for this information. Now, go check out my blog at www.Imjustcommentingtopostalink.com"

    I don't mean to be nasty, but these types of comments are drive me crazy. There is absolutely zero value in a comment like that, and it's painfully obvious that these are "drive by" comments and that this person is only going for the link exposure.

    I moderate my comments, and frankly, stuff like that doesn't get through.

    I blog with the intention of not only sharing information and providing value, but also to create a community. I want comments out there that are quality comments that add to the conversation.

    My blog is interactive and contains valuable information - it's not a link farm!

    Thanks for letting me vent on that a little bit *grin*
  • I can understand how you feel about meaningless comments. I feel the same way, too. Sad to say, my perception is that sometimes some bloggers are "just not up to it" with the subject matter they are reading on your blog. Instead of leaving a one-liner like "good post" or something to that effect just to let you know they have been here, it would be better for them to leave quietly.

    But, sometimes, we can't blame them because some of them may be newbies and, therefore, do not realize that such comments are passe. Hopefully, by reading an opinionated post like yours, they would see the light. But then there are others who are just spamming or just being cheeky about it. If anyone feels strongly about meaningless comments, I think you have the right to delete them at will.
  • I hope you weren't picking on my one-line response about you following through on point #3! Haha, just kidding. ;)

    I know in the past (and present too), whenever I've come across blog posts that are "up my alley", I'll try to include any additional tips or info that I might have to offer. For one, it will help to provide readers of the blog I'm commenting on extra information they may not have known.

    Furthermore, it demonstrates that I probably have some clue that I know what I'm talking about, and may entice readers to visit my blog -- as you mentioned -- in hopes that I have more tips to offer similar to the one I commented about.

    Excellent post. :)
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