Commenting to Attract Blog Readers Is Bad Advice

Darren Rowse published an article today on 10 Ways to Hurt Your Blog’s Brand by Commenting on Other Blogs. For all you bloggers out there, it’s an excellent article. Read. Enjoy. Take it to heart.

I don’t run into most of the items Darren lists very often here at Shards. If the site were more popular the situation may be different, but the people who visit and speak up are generally considerate, intelligent, and real. One item that does happen occasionally, though is using keywords or a site url instead of a real name in a comment. I’m not talking about trackbacks, but real comments. This irks me. Depending on the day of the week and my current emotional tone, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot.

I can’t help but think this is related to the oft given advice to promote one’s own blog by commenting on other blogs. This may be effective advice in that it let’s people know you’re out there and it may attract readers to your blog. To me, it is also obnoxious advice.

Look at it this way. You’re in a pub. A group of friends is gathered around a table or three tipping back a couple and shooting the breeze. In walks a guy who, while he appears to pay attention, is busy handing out business cards to everyone who will sit still for two seconds. Is this someone you really want to talk to?

Your url is already linked to your name in your comment. If you say something that encourages people to find out more about you, they’ll click on it and go to your site. This isn’t to say that when you’re among friends you don’t spread the word about something you’re excited about or new happenings in your life. It is to say that when you put yourself in business card mode, you have decided to treat those you’re talking to as objects, and are primarily interested in what you can get out of them, not in engaging in a conversation or building a relationship. Is this really what you want to do?

This isn’t to say don’t comment on blogs, whether here or elsewhere. Please, do! But think of the blogosphere as the world’s biggest village. In a village, either everyone knows everyone else, or they have the opportunity to do so if they wish. In a village people actually talk to each other, not at each other. Relationships may be good or bad, but they are relationships. Popularity, which is what you are trying to achieve when you’re in business card mode, comes as a natural result of the relationships you build and your integration into the community, not by using other people.

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