Getting the Most Out of Blog Comments, Forum Posts and Other Community Sites
There’s no doubt that you already know how valuable it can be to leave comments on other blogs, forums and so on as a way to get people to your site. These are just a few methods for generating targeted traffic and demonstrating your expertise on a particular topic. In addition, despite what some people might think, blogs and forums can be great ways to get new ideas for your own content or to find solutions to challenges you’re facing in your business. But there’s a right and wrong way to go about it, and I’m not just talking about common sense stuff like “don’t SPAM people”. Here are three ways you can use these types of sites and some ideas to keep in mind to get the most out of them and not annoy people in the process.
There are basically three ways you can use blogs, forums and other types of community sites:
Getting Advice
If there’s some sort of problem that’s making you bang your head against a wall, it can be great to find a place where you can reach out to someone and get the help you need. I do this all the time, especially when I’m picking up a new skill.
But when you’re asking for help, especially on forums, be sure to use a descriptive title so people know what you’re looking for help on before reading the entire post. So don’t just use something like “Wordpress 2.6 help needed” or whatever. Also be sure you leave enough info so people can quickly help you out without a lot of needless back and forth – what version of the software are you using, what type of dog do you have and how old, or whatever info is appropriate. Also, try to see if there’s already a post covering that topic, but that should go without saying. Most sites have a search function for a reason.
Leaving Advice
When it comes to leaving advice, don’t you find it annoying when someone leaves a comment that’s just enough to be totally useless? Then don’t be that person. If someone is asking how to install some piece of software or keep their dog from “going” on the carpet, give them enough detail to be helpful.
Otherwise, it’s a good idea to follow the mantra that “If you don’t have anything useful to say, don’t say anything at all“. I was on a site where someone asked a question about Camtasia. One reply was something like “Oh, just do x” while the other was a link to a YouTube video explaining “How to do x” and included a reference to a product the person sells that goes over things in more detail. Big difference!
Getting Content Ideas
You should be using forums and other sites to help you find content ideas. If you see people asking the same questions over and over again about how to do something, that’s just BEGGING for an in-depth article to be written (at the very least). Even better if you can do a video on YouTube, a podcast or something that provides even more detail.
Of course, this is best if you have your own products to sell or have some other incentive in doing so. Each of these high-quality content items can be used to lead people back to your offer.
Site to You Might Want to Take a Look At:
Yahoo Answers
Google Groups
Blogs in your market (use their RSS feed to keep up-to-date)
Forums in your market (lots of forums also have RSS feeds too)
Anyway, just a couple of thoughts.
What do you do to get the most out of blogs, forums and other community sites? Just leave a comment below.
8 Responses to “Getting the Most Out of Blog Comments, Forum Posts and Other Community Sites”
Just today I left a post a comment at SEOmoz that was responded to (because I had used detail) and now because of the feedback I got on that idea, I am going to turn that into a blog post.
Julian,
I love it when that sort of thing happens. There are so many things you can do with well thought out content. Blog posts, podcasts, PDF reports/tip sheets, and so on. And if the topic has enough depth, you could probably find a way to build a full blown teleseminar or other product out of it. Well, that might be a stretch from just one blog comment, but I’m sure you see where I’m going with this.
Kenton
I regularly watch Yahoo Answers for frequently asked questions that don’t get a lot of attention. Even forums in your niche can give you great ideas for what type of content to write about.
The paragraph relating to forums is spot on – one of my blogs is a site that gives tips on how to save money (a search phrase that is growing rapidly due to the current economic climate). I built the site after seeing a big spike in questions relating to the topic.
Leaving advice seem to be a good way to build up rep. Especially if you can help out someone who is well know. Even though I have never ran a blog I used to get quite a lot of links back to my old site due to helpful comments I left. On the other hand asking for advice or info can help to stimulate discourse and get you noticed.
As you mentioned there is bad ways of doing this. A good example at the moment would be Adult Friend Finder. I’ve noticed loads of comments they have done using the link text “swingers” of late. Really surprised people let those go through.
Check out the latest blog post from David’s site: Enableing Chinese, Arabic and Other High Unicode in WordPress Slugs
Blogs and forums do help because you can set up your profile and create a signature linking to your site. But then again, these are just one of the many ways to create traffic and links.
Anyways, I find this blog helpful. You may want to post a list of do follow sites and blogs in your future posts. Thanks a lot!
Chris
Great tips. I guess I’d add that comments are also a good way to build relationships. There are a handful of blogs I commented on a lot, where I wasn’t really giving or getting advice, or getting ideas, I just liked what the blogger had to say. It took a while, but several of those relationships eventually paid off (in links, collaborative projects, advice, etc.).
Check out the latest blog post from spot’s site: Microsoft’s Wireless, Wonderful Arc Mouse
Google alerts is another good way of generating ideas for blog posts, if you have a Google account you can setup an account so that you get emails every time some news is published with your keyword of phrase in. You can also set how often you would like to receive the alerts. It helps keep you up to date on what’s new or most talked about in your industry.
If you do post a question on the forum, when you do get the solution that works put up a post yourself to say what you did to resolve the solution so anyone coming along at a later date has a simple answer, as opposed to saying thank you for someone emailing you the answer and never posting the solution.