How to Leave a Comment

by Extreme John on December 30, 2009 12,514 views

«

»

A few bloggers that read my blog are probably wondering why I am writing about leaving comments or at least wondering why I am writing a “how to” about it. The answer to that question is simple, because people only know what they know. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a manger or small business owner is the mistake of ASSuming that people know how to do things, especially when it comes to some of the most basic things.

Not only can small business owners or managers make that mistake but so many new blogs or newbie bloggers seem to make the very same mistake, always remember that even the most basic things that you know or things that you ASSume others know might be difficult for your readers to figure out. In short, if your looking to increase comments on your blog it might not hurt to take a few minutes to explain the process, or better yet you can just link to this post http://www.extremejohn.com/how-to-leave-a-comment/ and show some luv. Keep in mind that this will be for WordPress blogs, if you have a blogger blog or some other blogging platform you might want to do a quick tutorial as well.

How to Leave a Blog Comment

If you visit your favorite blog from the main page or main index page of the blog (http://www.extremejohn.com) you might find a design like the design on my blog, in order to see the comment field for any of my specific posts you will need to click the article or post title. Once you click the post title the page will load and take you to the full article content, on Extreme John.com you can also click the “Click Here to Continue Reading” that you will see placed in various spots following the post title.

Click the article or post title to continue to the full article content.

It’s not common for a search engine like Google or Bing to return a direct link to the complete article content when you search for a specific search term or search phrase, a good example would be if you search Google for “how to leave a comment” it might take you to this post, in the event that it did you would not see the main page of my blog unless you typed it in or clicked through to it.

Leaving a Comment After Reading a Post

Not every blog will have you click through to read an entire blog post from the main page, there are plenty of blogs out there that display the entire article content on the main page of their blog. However in the event you are looking to comment on a blog you will typically need to click the post title or article title in order to have access to the commenting field.

Let’s say I click through to a recent guest post that Mike from Daily Shot of Coffee did titled, “How to Get Free Products to Review on Your Blog“. Once I finish reading through the article and decide if I would like to comment on it I scroll down until I see the comment author field, this is the area that will allow you to fill in the information needed to comment on a WordPress blog.

WordPress Comment Section

A. Name Field

This is the area that allows you to put your name, username, or nickname and should never contain a business name or a specific product as most bloggers will consider this a form of spam and delete your comment or mark it as spam. I currently use the Keyword Luv WordPress plugin that allows you to link your keywords to your website address or blog address, if you do not have a website or awesome blog you can simply enter your first name and move on the B.

Based on the example above my username would be “Extreme John”, by using the @ symbol after my username, I can than target keywords or a short keyword phrase, in this example I am targeting “Blogging CEO” as my keyword phrase and that is what gets linked to my website url instead of my username. Linking the username in my case would be fine on my blog since I don’t really need to target the “Extreme John” keyphrase, however if I wanted traffic geared towards a “blogging CEO” I can use that keyword phrase in the username field after my username. Extreme John @Blogging CEO.

Keyword Luv WordPress Plugin GOOD Example

In the example above Kristi the creative blogger behind Kikolani entered her username as, “Kikolani @Blogging“. This is an excellent example of Kristi using Keyword Luv to her advantage as a way to generate targeted do follow backlink traffic to her blog for the keyword “blogging”. A bad example of keyword targeting would be abusing Keyword Luv by entering in a long keyword phrase, an example of a Keyword phrase that would be a bad idea would be something like, “Jack @Becoming an Internet Entrepreneur”. The keyword phrase is too long and my blog will automatically No Do Follow keyword phrases that are more than three short words or greater than 20 characters in length.

B. Email Address

By entering your email address it validates that your leaving a valid comment and that you are not an internet spam bot of some sort, you don’t have to worry about me sending out spam mail or anything like that because I don’t send newsletters or any of that stuff. If you want to stay up to speed on what’s going on around here you can make the choice and subscribe to my rss feed, I’m not going to force you into deleting a bunch of extra crap email.

C. Blog or Website Address/URL

If you do not have a blog or a website you don’t need to enter anything here, please don’t make something up just for the sake of entering something into the field.

Now if you have a hot blog or a website you are definitely going to want to put your website or blog url in the website field, there are a few reasons specifically that you would want to do this on my blog, Extreme John.com is a Do Follow blog that features the Keyword Luv WordPress Plugin as explained above and I also use the Comment Luv WordPress Plugin.

The CommentLuv plugin will display your most recent posts in a drop down below the comment field, I recommend selecting one of your previous posts from the drop down that is related to the blog post that your commenting on. Yup, another backlink and one that goes directly to a post of your choice. Plenty of WordPress bloggers use this plugin, if you are a newbie blogger or a noob you will quickly learn about the Comment Luv plugin and it’s benefits, I certainly suggest using it on your WordPress blog.

CommentLuv WordPress Plugin Example

In the example above I picked “UFC 108 Predictions” to be displayed after my comment on the blog that I am leaving a comment on.

D. Comment Field

Please take the time to leave a relevant comment that is fitting to the topic at hand, refrain from cursing as most bloggers don’t want curses on their blog because they fear the Google smack. Personally I don’t care as long as your comment is real and relevant to the topic being discussed. I would suggest refraining from placing links to products or anything else that does not pertain to the topic in your comment, not to mention most blogs use some form of spam control that will just toss your comment into the spam section. That sucks.

E. Submit Comment Button

Pretty simple, just click the button after you fill in all of your information.

Blog Commenting Tips

1. Fill in all information that pertains to you.
2. Don’t abuse blogs that use the Keyword Luv plugin.
3. Leave a relevant comment that adds to the conversation.
4. Utilize Comment Luv when available.
5. Hit the submit button.

I hope that some of you find this information somewhat useful when it comes to leaving comments or educating your blog guests on how to leave a comment on your blog. Don’t forget you can become a fan of my Facebook Fan Page or follow me on twitter to stay informed of what’s going on around here, my twitter username is @extremejohn.

Tagged as: blog comments, blogging tips, how to, leave a comment, tutorial, wordpress blog

Buffer

What can I say! But you’ve certainly gone all out with this extremely well put together “How To..” it’s ideal for any new commenter and even for those that aren’t entirely sure how to comment on blogs. 10 out of 10
.-= Karen @ BlazingMinds´s last blog ..Latest Blogger Interview with Mike Crimmins from Daily Shot of Coffee =-.