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Just like your email inbox, spammers attack blog sites too.
Interestingly, it’s easy. First, look at what spammers who put comments on blogs do. While some are obvious, the challenging calls about whether or not it’s spam come from the spammers who play to our egos by telling us how great we are and how much they love our posts.
Typical tactics are to say something like, “I love your post so much. I’ve bookmarked it and will be back often.” Sunday I got an email notice that I have “A new comment to approve” or throw out. The comment was “Very useful website. Hope it will continually be alive!”
Now if you got a post like this wouldn’t your feel a bit proud? Wouldn’t you be tempted to leave it up for everyone in the world to see how good you are? The problem is, comments like this are not compliments. They are clever attempts to manipulate the blogger into posting their comments so that their websites will show up on yours. By using a generic compliment they can have software automatically post the comment without ever reading the site themselves.
They do this for a couple reasons, such as wanting people to see their website URL and click on it. Their other intent is for the search engines to find the link back to their sites so as to give them a better placement in organic searches.
If you really want to become part of the Internet community by joining a discussion, give a sincere compliment or even a sincere objection. You do this by actually adding to the specific discussion in that post or by explaining what it is you liked – and why.
When I comment, sometimes I agree. For instance, I might describe how it applied to my experience. Sometimes I expand on the other writer’s idea by taking it further or giving a slightly different viewpoint. I might even politely disagree. This isn’t the place to vent your anger or rant as you’ll lose from other readers, a lesson I had to learn when I allowed some article to punch one of my buttons.
The point of this is, avoid looking like a spammer by giving specific feedback that demonstrates you actually read the article. Add a comment to explain what you liked or didn’t like. Aim to contribute to a discussion. You’ll then be involved in the Internet community and participating in social networking. I find it fun to connect with people this way. I think you will too when you find someone you respect.
For some examples of how I apply what I’ve described here, check out my Comments on these blog posts: Judith & Jim’s “Soft Sell Marketing Misconceptions – A Dime a Dozen”
and Bob Poole’s “We All Want To Be Respected – Then We’ll Trust.”
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