3 Typical Benefits of Commenting on Blogs and One Surprising Discovery!
Do you comment on other blogs? If not, you should. Like immediately.
Commenting on other blogs is a great way to not only engage with others in your niche but also to benefit yourself.
And let’s face it, there is a bit of everything that you do online that you want to benefit yourself. Don’t worry, there’s nothing wrong with thinking like that.
In this post I’m going to lay out 3 standard benefits most people know about when it comes to commenting on blogs. But I’m also going to drop some knowledge on one that I just recently discovered by accident.
Standard Benefit 1 – Generate (Valuable) Traffic To Your Site
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book. And it still works to this day.
In fact, last month I received 2% of my overall traffic from one single comment on a major blog in the online business space. Now, 2% may not seem that big but there is an associated metric that really tells the true value.
Those that came to my blog from that comment had an average session duration of 3:10!
Now, I understand the average session duration metric in Google Analytics is a bit of fuzzy math, but it does indicate a level of engagement.
To expand on this point further, I also received quite a bit of traffic from the Disqus blog commenting system. This traffic was generated from various comments I made across a number of websites.
This traffic was even better in terms of engagement. Their average session duration was a whopping 10 minutes and 22 seconds! 10 freaking minutes on my site.
That is what we are all after. I don’t care how many clicks you get to your site. It’s how long they stay there and consume your content.
Standard Benefit Number 2 – Meet New People
The comment section on websites is a great way for you to connect with others with similar interests. Don’t dump your comment and walk away.
Read the other comments and check out the work of some of the other folks there.
Take it a step further and reply to their comment. Responses to comments are not reserved solely for the blog author. Get in there and engage with them.
Once you start to pay attention to who else is in the comments you might start to see the same folks. These interactions can lead to relationships that may benefit your own platform down the road.
Standard Benefit Number 3 – Discover New Content Providers to Follow
This is similar to the last item but a little bit different. In this case, you have the opportunity to discover additional platforms you may be interested in.
I’ve recently found blogs that I would have never found simply by clicking on a blog commenter’s link.
Use the comments section to explore other bloggers’ work and see if there are new sites you can add to your bookmarks or RSS feed.
Uber-Cool Benefit You Probably Didn’t Think Of
Ok, so here is the one that I just recently discovered. It happened in the midst of adding a comment to a blog.
There I was typing away when I suddenly thought to myself, “hmmm, maybe I should write about that.”
You see, when you comment on blog posts you are typically adding your perspective/opinion to what was written. What you will find is that your perspective may be unique or at least something that could be expanded upon outside the comments section of someone’s blog.
What better opportunity to generate content ideas than to engage and interpret what you read elsewhere!
As I was typing my comment I actually generated two ideas for future blog posts. In fact, this blog post is a direct result of coming to this realization as I was typing the comment.
Your Takeaway
Start to comment on blogs. Start to engage with others and bring engagement back.
As blog owners, nothing warms our heart more than to see comments below our hard work. Start to pay it back and give the love to other bloggers.
Not only will you provide them valueable feedback, you might just get something out of it for yourself.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
