Commenting on blogs is a great way to gain exposure for your site, but are you getting the most benefit from your time? A good comment is going to send traffic to your site while a bad comment will get deleted or ignored. Follow these tips and you’ll be commenting like a pro.
Don’t be a drive by commenter. Find top blogs in your industry and subscribe to their RSS feed. Make yourself a usual. Think Cheers, the TV show from the 80’s. Every time Norm walked through the door he got a hearty shout from the rest of the bar. He was popular because of his regular engaging conversation. Do the same! 
I’m really bad with names, and so are most people. But, I’ll never forget a face. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Gravatars they are user images that are tied to an email address. When you leave a comment with the email it posts your pic.
Your gravatar should be friendly and welcoming. No pics of you with bed head, screaming, or holding you favorite beer. To brand yourself and your site you can also add the name of your site to the image.
No one like to ask for someone’s name. Let the world know who you are. Don’t use keywords for your name. This is tacky and will make your message look like spam. Besides who wants to have a conversation with someone named “fast dirt bikes”.
You can use your site name in addition to you real name with this format, Russ Adams @ WebDesign.fm. Most sites will allow this, but take a look around at the other posted comments to know for sure.
Unless you have the strong personality to pull off a nickname stick with your real name. It’s OK for your friends in the real world call you Stinky, but the rest of us would like to know who you are. 
There is a trend on the internet to step away from the supposed anonymity of aliases and just be yourself.
OK, so this was covered earlier, but it is the most important thing that you can do. Engage the blogger and other blog commenters. Ask questions, add to the conversation, and politely tell everyone if you disagree and why.
Some blogs will let you subscribe to the comments. Come back and add more to the conversation.
This isn’t an all encompassing list, but a good place to start. What else should someone do when commenting on a blog?
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Great post! I have been consciously trying to interact with more people/groups to build up a network of people that read the same blogs as I do. I’m slowly pushing myself toward full time free lancing, and I know how important it will be to have a wide range of contacts. I’ve found the hardest part is tracking every place I have left comments to see if there have been follow up comments that warrant a response to mine. Those “receive notification of other comments” options are really handy for that, but then my inbox gets bombarded with sometimes un-useful information. Any one else have better techniques?
Nice post! These points seem fairly obvious but it’s always amazing how many people don’t abide by them.
Tom, thank you for your comment. I’ve found most things are fairly simple we just forget the easy steps. Hopefully, this was a good reminder for everyone.
Gabe, thank you for your comment. I don’t try to follow all the posts that I comment on. Instead I follow the best of the best otherwise I would never get any sleep. My technique is fairly simple. I visit the same sites over and over so I simply pop in on posts that I commented on in the past and quickly skim the comments. Best of luck to you in your freelancing career.
Right after I posted my comment I noticed another tool on your blog – subscribing to the rss feed for comments. That’s working really well, but unfortunately not all blogs make it obvious how to do that. It’s great when I can do it – I just devote a whole netvibes tab to comments I’m active with, and I can follow along easily.
I believe if you’re a designer, you should make sure your gravatar shows that! The same for anyone advertising them self with blog comments. Make it show who you are and what you do!
As for being polite, this is the internet and sometimes I just express my however I choose. I don’t think I’m usually rude…but I’m not going to censor myself here like I would in an office!
F&%@ THAT (edited by admin)
see?
LOL
Sometimes the most obvious things are the best.
Some people make a lot of money telling the people that grass is green
after reading this post, i set up my gravatar. Thanks for the reminders and now I’m set for the world of blog commenting!