Should I comment?

2007

Aug

There are many key elements to a successful blogger, but one of them is certainly his ability to leave the right comments on the right blogs. Matt Codington came up with a very interesting little exercise on his blog, NetBusinessBlog.com, to help determine what kind of blogs would be ideal to comment on.

The exercise is pretty straight forward, I have to select 5 blogs in a particular niche that I think would be good to comment on and then write a detailed post explaining my reasons for picking those specific blogs. I can handle most of this, but there is one small snag, the niche has to be gardening. Anyway, the point of the exercise to to help me get out of my comfort zone and explore. So here I go.

How to Find Your Blogs
The first thing I did was to make a google blog search for anything to do with gardening, but the results I was getting weren’t really what I was after, maybe I’m doing something wrong. But anyway, I decided to see what the normal google search would spit out. I did a search for gardening blogs and the first result turns out to be a nice page with a huge list of different gardening blogs. So I started going through the list but the quality wasn’t really what I wanted but then I got the idea to check what they linked to, ahh now I started going somewhere. Other options I might use would include searching mybloglog.com for gardening communities, or I might check out some forums.

What’s My Criteria
also reward their top Normally there’s a number of things I look out for when looking for blogs to comment on. Even though my blog doesn’t have one (I need to switch to wordpress), one of the first things I look for is whether the blog has a top commentator plugin, many times bloggers that use this plugincommentators by giving them a permalink at the end of the month so that a bonus. I also like to comment on blogs that have a good amount of comments already. Then of course I check things like the PR, technorati rankings, and feed readers, the more exposure the blog gets the more your comment will too.

And the Winners Are.
Here’s what I chose starting from my favorite at the top and working down:

VeggieGardeningTips.com - This blog will come at number one for a number of reasons. Firstly I like the layout and general look of the blog, but more importantly it has a PR of 5 and also a pretty decent amount of comments, which shows that it has a following. There is no top commentator but there is a recent commentator so I’ll still get my 5 minutes of fame.
Bliss - This blog has pretty much only one thing going for it. I think I’ve only seen John Chow pull more comments than this, and that’s why Bliss comes in at number two. This blog also won some fancy awards but from a commenting perspective that means nothing. Ohh, and it has a PR 4 so that’s ok.
ThisGardenIsIlligal.com - Besides the obvious PR 5 this blog has a decent amount of comments already, indicating that there is a good gardening community that frequents here.
TheBloggingNurseryman - This blog has pretty much the same qualities as the one above except that it doesn’t seem as established.
Woodlands World - I’m putting this blog in last place mainly because its real late and I’m tired. It doesn’t have a whole lot of comments but I think the main reason that stood out to me was the very low hits to life of blog ratio, indicating that this blog doesn’t get very many hits.

Last Thoughts
There are still a number of things I’d look out for if I were commenting in my specific niche. I’d obviously have to get into the current discussion or if there was no discussion going I’d comment based on what the post was about and whether it made me think or not.

I don’t really think there is a right or wrong blog to comment on, if you like the blog, post, and author, then I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t leave a comment or two. In the end, if you’re just blogging and commenting for ulterior motives then you’re not going to be very successful, blogging is a people business and they can tell when you’re just doing it for yourself, so just be natural and have fun.

Simon

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