Philip V Ariel’s commenting experience

Philip Verghese Ariel is a great advocate of blog comments. It was so nice to come across someone else with such enthusiasm for this practice.

In his post The Power of Blog Comments, he explained his commenting experience. And his natural writing style is certainly infectious in attracting a good readership.

Being a blog comment author

Philip confessed he started his commenting experience without even having a blog. He called himself a blog comment author, which I think is a perfect description.

In fact I wish most bloggers started their commenting experience in the same way. Learning how to comment well will stand you in good stead when it comes to writing good posts.

Commenting makes you really think what you write. You are confined to a small space, but yet you may have a lot to say. You soon learn the art of précis and being succinct.

And since producing a post with one or two words is obviously useless, hopefully the same thought processes will continue towards writing a reasonable amount in comments.

Becoming a blog author

Blog authors who were impressed with Philip's comments asked him why he didn't have a blog of his own. So eventually he progressed from a Blogger blog to a self-hosted WordPress site.

He continued with his commenting experience, of course. And he started to notice results. These are his words below:

"Just two years completed and with all humbleness, I can say that now my Domain Authority (DA) and Alexa stats are now at a higher level and I am getting some monetary benefits too because of the traffic I get on my sites.

"I could achieve this just because of my relentless activities on my blog pages as well as by the interaction with the fellow blogger’s pages by contributing value-added constructive and debatable comments."

Focus on relentless results

Philip touched on one area of his success, his relentless activities. In fact he referred to this as a strategy. And that is exactly how commenting should be, with a plan, process and analysable results.

And a commenting strategy will take up a lot of time. It isn't by any means a quick fix. It requires continuous hard work that needs to become a daily habit, like checking what's going on in social media.

In fact, as a result of being nosey in what happens socially, the desire to comment should become a natural response to whatever you have read, regardless of where you found it.

Philip's commenting experience tips

Philip's post provided 5 tips from his commenting experience. Even though I have mentioned these several times in my other posts, it's worth repeating them:

1. Avoid one word or one line comments

Receiving a comment that says things like "awesome" or "very nice" or "thanks" or "amazing post" or "great post, I like it" can be an irritation to blog authors. The only reaction to this sort of comment is to delete it.

Philip notes the person who writes single word comments is only focusing on getting a link back to his blog. He usually sees similar comments on several of his posts, and the timeline shows the commenter definitely didn't read any of the posts before commenting.

The obvious solution would be to write more if you want to avoid being seen as a spammer. Philip suggests a "mini-post comment" will attract more attention from the blog author than only a few worthless lines.

2. Read the post properly

Philip noticed some readers only glance at the first and last paragraph of the post before attempting a reply. These are the ones that provide inadequate comments, because they haven't bothered to sit and read all the content first.

How can a reader write a relevant and constructive comment, if they haven't taken the trouble to read the post to properly understand what it is about?

Full comprehension of the post's subject means the reader will be able to offer a genuine opinion or feedback that is helpful or forthcoming. This in turn will attract the attention of the blog's author, who may be inspired to write a reply.

3. Avoid relentless repetition

A spamming tactic is to use the same comment on lots of different posts. Even if you're not a spammer, this lack of interest, creativity and foresight shows a distinct lack of regard for the blog's author and the hard work they have put into their posts.

The blogosphere does not tolerate repetition. Not only does it smack of plagiarism, it could easily get your comment picked up by the moderation systems and the commenter classed as a spammer.  Something you don't want if you are a genuine commenter.

This sort of practice not only results in the comment being deleted, but if this is done on a forum or group, the commenter will be banned from commenting there again. It is viewed as spamming activity to get more backlinks to a blog or site.

4. Be more altruistic

A commenting experience thrives best in a give and take scenario. If you are willing to leave as many good quality, helpful and valuable comments on lots of other blogs first, eventually you will start receiving some back to yours.

In fact, you need to leave comments without the expectation of getting one back. It doesn't necessarily work like that. Merely receiving a reply to your comment should be enough recompense and an indicator you wrote a worthy comment.

However, writing a lot of suitably impressive comments has a high chance of the blog's author and their readers clicking on the link behind your name to read the contents of your blog. So it is a practice worth doing to get more traffic.

5. Show your appreciation

Apart from regularly replying to anyone who leaves a response to your posts or even your comments, therefore continuing the conversation, it's nice to show appreciation to those who have bothered to comment on your blog.

Philip has found a WordPress plugin called "MyCommentAuthors", which creates a list of whoever left a comment over the past month. This isn't to show them up, but to express thanks for their efforts, and to encourage others to comment as well.

Philip also suggests writing a monthly post to thank his commenters for their contributions. The plugin also emails the commenters to let them know this post has been written, so they have the chance to comment in return.

What about your commenting experience?

I would love to write a post about another blog author's (or even a blog comment author's) experience on commenting on fellow bloggers's blogs. If you want to participate, why not reply through the comments below, or contact me to talk about it. I would love to hear from you.

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Alice Elliott

Alice Elliott, aka Fairy Blog Mother, aims to educate the world about the benefits of commenting, engagement and interaction to both individuals and businesses.

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