Comments on blogs are wonderful things. In fact, one of the best ways to get readers at your own blog is to leave great comments at other blogs, adding value and continuing conversations. At your own blog, comments are both fun and a great way to help you find out more about your community.
The comments you make become part of your online reputation. So, simply saying “Wow! Great post!” on blog after blog won’t help you as much as consistently leaving intelligent, funny, or helpful comments in few places… and then sticking around to be part of any follow-up conversation, too.
If you blog, make sure you stay active in your own comments – it’s the best way to build relationships and to find out more about what your readers are coming for. Plus, at least for me, it’s fun.
Now, if you want to do yourself a disservice, you’ll leave self-promotional comments that aren’t on topic or comments that show you didn’t read the post/blog in question. Today, over at GottaBook I got just such a comment (now delete)… and it was one of the more egregious examples I’ve received.
I thought I’d go over the reasons why, just to make sure y’all don’t make any of these same mistakes. First, here’s the comment:
I really enjoyed your website! Your book reviews are wonderful reading. Have you heard of Book Title Redacted? It’s worth a review: http://booknamehere. Please let me know if you are interested in reviewing this nominee for Best Children’s Book of 2009! info@booknamehere. Thank you, Name Redacted.
Why is this a problematic comment? How about this to start: I don’t do book reviews. That kinda puts into doubt their opening statement about enjoying my website (or blog, if you prefer).
So, already, from the first sentences, I know that this is a one-sided situation: they want something, and I am not being targeted because of anything about me or my blog. If you ever do approach someone via their comments (or via email or really, any way), make sure you make it clear exactly why them and why now.
Making big statements without backup (nominee for what award, exactly) also will never help your cause. You can let achievement speak for itself, but don’t inflate or blow smoke. To me, this reads as desperation, not as impressive.
And finally, and this is why I call it egregious: look at where you’re posting. This particular comment was left in a post asking folks to send cards and letters to someone who had just undergone major surgery! This is a big time fail.
Most of us aren’t likely to make these same mistakes, I suspect, but I still find them informative. I know it made me review what I’m doing to make sure I’m adding value and building relationships when I comment.
And no… I didn’t request a review copy, but feel free to contact me if you’d like the information to do so.
Do you have horror stories or great commenting experience to share? If so… please leave a comment!
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I just deleted this same comment (presumably for the same book) from my blog. The fact that you received the same one is just one more indicator that this is self-promotional, poorly judged spam. I had another one last week where the person left the same self-promotional comment on my blog and on three different posts (by different authors) at Booklights. I deleted them all. The longer I blog, the less tolerant I am of being used for promotion via my blog’s comments. Thanks for writing about this, Greg.
I also enjoyed deleting that comment. Though I had to admire the empty chutzpah of “this nominee for Best Children’s Book of 2009!” It almost beat a front-cover line I saw on a self-published book decades back: “Soon to be a million copies in print!”
I deleted the same comment from my blog and another one I write for.
I also deleted another person’s promotion of her book on eight separate posts. That kind of thing does not endear me to the book’s author, needless to say.
Delete, delete, delete. I’m ruthless, even though I’m a newbie at this and haven’t been overwhelmed with this sort of spam the way you, Greg & Jen, have. Self-promo comments can, at the least, interrupt a good conversation, and I worry that leaving them up would reflect poorly on my “hostess” skills.
Yup! I got this one too and promptly deleted it. It appeared on a book review for nonfiction Monday.
Classic. I recently had a commenter from some “Flu Wicki Society” or somesuch offer me an AWARD for my web site’s “consistently relevant coverage of H1N1″ all because I wrote one post about my kid getting the swine flu and living to tell. My prize was an animated banner to place on my blog promoting their site.
How does one accept such an honor?!
I got the same one as well, which means they were really desperate.
Gee, I didn’t get that one. All I got were some comments in Cyrillic and Chinese. Is that like coal in one’s stocking?
PS – Greg, is there a way to easiliy “follow this discussion” on your blog? I use that feature a lot to help me remain part of the comment conversation.
Thanks for the comments, y’all. I can now count the comment featured in this post at over a dozen blogs, and that’s just sad. Still, my goal here is not to single out that person or any other spammer… but to show that there are more effective way to reach out and be part of the community. Sometimes, I think these spam comments are from folks who would be willing to learn how to do things a different way… but just don’t know better. Not that that’s an excuse, in my eyes, but perhaps this and other posts can illuminate for them? One can hope….
Yes, Greg, I think the weird self-promotional placement comments are due to naivete. Of the ones I get, most are from self-published authors.
Great post! No, seriously, I mean that.
I’m new here at The Happy Accident, and even I know how important it is to READ before you WRITE. Unfortunately, and as you’ve identified here in the comments thread, what has happened here is a failure of outreach / engagement that was too quickly put together and somewhat recklessly executed. I see it in the PR industry a lot.
It’s like if you’re having a dinner party conversation, and someone butts in and says, “Oh yeah, that’s great. Hey, what do you think of [something only slightly relevant]?” It creates the same amount of awkwardness.
Yikes! Now that’s just tacky. I’ve only been blogging for a few months, and so far have had nothing but great commentors. Crossing my fingers and toes for that to continue
I got a very similar one at my blog, but without the Best Book! bit. So they are international spammers!
I got the same comment and ignored it. It seems lately I have been getting more and more of those. I guess it’s becoming standard marketing advice to target bloggers just to get one’s name out there. I always delete anything that seems random, especially if there is a link to someone’s site. Today I found about six sudden comments on a three year old Friday Poetry post of mine, all linking back to commercial sites. I just took the whole post down for a while to discourage whoever it was. I hate when that happens.
The first time I get a SPAM-type comment, I try to track the author down via their profile or website, and I send them an email explaining that I’ve deleted their comment and why such comments are counter-productive. Thanks for writing this post, Greg. Now I can just send them here to read your more detailed explanation!
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