I often remove up to a third of my points so that commentators could make those points. If all that’s left to say in a comment is “nice post” you’ve failed!

Last week on Lid‘s guest post (What Public Relations 1.0 Teaches Us About Business Blogging), Deb mentioned in the comments that we shouldn’t write perfect posts, because that leaves commentators no room to say anything. I agreed and said that although it didn’t feel right to deliberately leave things out, it was the right thing to do:

If people leave comments like “I have nothing else to say” you overshot the mark. Leave spaces for people to jump in. Be deliberately incomplete. It feels wrong when you do it, but it’s oh-so-right in the final outcome!

Mike Van Zandwijk in the comments asked me if I could follow-up on that, so here we are!

I don’t know who said that “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” I’m not even a big jazz fan, but that idea has always resonated with me, because restraint and blank spaces in any art are the key. Creativity is channeled and made into a more powerful flow by constraints (note to self: write about this more, too).

If you say everything there is to say in a blog post, well, there’s nothing left to be said, is there? You left nothing for your commentators. Oops.

So how do you do this? Plan for it. Instead of writing everything out as you’re used to, just jot down the main points you want to make. Then go back and take some out. If you can still make a decent post out of it, go for it. It still has to hold together on its own even if nobody else jumps into the blank spaces you left for them.

Another possible way is by careful word choice. I just did it right there: were you thinking there must be other possible ways besides the one I’m mentioning? That plants the seeds in the minds of your readers that sprouts and compels them to comment. The word “possible” (and “impossible” too) gets people to thinking.

It’s not the notes you play… it’s the notes you don’t play.

photo by Polifemus

Lid said:

Great post Michael – thanks!

One thing I did want to mention – because we have just had huge dramas doing this ourselves – is that WordPress.com does allows its blogs to be redirected to your own self-managed domain, for a fee of $10/year. (This is managed within the WordPress administration dashboard, select “Upgrades” and then “Domains”.)

The only problem with this is that it uses a 302 (temporary) redirect instead of the 301 (permanent) redirect that Google prefers…so yep, you lose your links.

I agree that you really should set up your own self hosted blog up front – because the day will come that you want to move, and then it gets tricky.

Mad said:

I just want to follow up on Lid’s comment that it is possible to get WordPress.com to redirect your blog hosted by them to your new domain name.

We found the whole issue confusing, and ended writing an Open Letter to Automattic in frustration and Matt provided the necessary information to get it done.

We also wrote up a step by step guide on how to redirect your WordPress.com blog to your own WordPress hosted blog.

The hardest part was convincing ourselves that it was OK to fiddle with our domains DNS settings, which GoDaddy (our host) made very easy, and I assume other hosts would offer similar screens.

I hope this is of help to others.

You can see this in action as http://blogwell.wordpress.com is automatically redirected to http://blog-well.com.

Sandy said:

I also have recently transitioned from WordPress.com to my own pay server running WordPress. And just like Carla, my main problem was with redirecting permalinks. I am going to post a how-to regarding this soon, but in a nutshell, there are two things you need to do to make this transition smoother:

1. You need to pay WordPress.com to use your own domain name. That way, yourblog.com will be redirected to yourblog.wordpress.com. Google will use yourblog.com to establish permalinks.

2. When it’s time to move to your own server, simply move yourblog.com along with it. The only remaining trick is if you decide on a different permalink structure (WordPress.com uses /year/month/day/postname), and there’s a WordPress plug-in called Permalink Redirect that takes care of that for you.

I didn’t do 1) so I had to manually link all my old articles to the new permalink.

There was one more issue that required a MySQL query to fix – internal links from my blog posts needed to be edited to reflect the new permalinks. Luckily I found someone who gave me step by step instructions on how to edit the WordPress MySQL database directly.

I would like to thank you folks for your super-helpful comments. You are examples of how commenting on other blogs is supposed to be: contributing value that comes back to yourselves while building relationships and community.

I’m getting annoyed.

I don’t like it when people put keywords where their name goes in the comments.

I know the tone of the post was, well, kinda bitchy, and the truth is that’s how I felt when I wrote it. A little raw emotion on a blog isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, and it’s one of the aspects of blogging I dearly love. In this case, a little distance might have been a good thing. But that’s not the real reason I’m writing this post now. I just wanted to acknowledge that I was in a high state of being miffed (miffededness? miffification?).

The reason I’m writing about this now is because I want to update and clarify the most controversial aspect of the policy: that commentators should just use their name only. As James Chartrand pointed out in the comments, there truly is a difference between spamming the name field with keywords or blog names and engaging in legitimate branding & identification. We’ve had a great discussion about it (if you haven’t read the post and the comments, you should, it’s now the second-most highly commented post ever on Remarkablogger).

I think James has made an excellent point, so I’m amending the policy to allow for branding/identification in the comment name field. So something like this is acceptable: “James Chartrand – Men with Pens” or this: “Alister Cameron // Blogologist.” But not this: “South America Vacations” or this: “Personal Injury Lawyer.”

But wait! there’s more… (I always wanted to say that!)

As an experiment, I’m going to begin signing all comments I leave elsewhere as “Michael Martine, Blog Consultant.” I’ll do this until the end of March and then report on if I’ve seen any benefits (or problems) from doing it. If I can report clear benefits from doing it, then I will recommend this as a strategy for others. But if not, or if it causes issues, then I will come out against it. For blogs which have “no-follow” enabled (which is like 99% of them) I should see no SEO benefits from doing this. But there are a few blogs that have removed “no-follow,” which means I could potentially see some SEO benefits from doing this. I’m very curious to see what happens!

Ethical

Commenting is a great way to drive traffic back to your blog and network with other bloggers. In fact, that is ALL it does. Links in comments do not affect your search engine rankings, as 99.99% of them will not be seen by Google (it’s called “no-follow” and it’s code your blog automatically adds into links placed into the comments). By commenting, I have met many wonderful people online, and I’ve been hired as a blog consultant by people who read my comments on other blogs.

Commenting on other blogs causes comments on your blog, too. If your comment really stands out, people get curious about who you are and they visit your blog. This is ethical and how it’s supposed to go. It’s a great way to meet people online. Before all this social media stuff started happening, blogs were (and are) a form of social media because of comments. You have to approach commenting like you do blogging: be real, say something worthwhile, provide value.

Unethical

Automated spamming of comments is the bane of the blogosphere. Paying people to leave comments for your blog on other blogs is unethical. Search keywords in the name box of comments is a hallmark of comment spam, which means that you shouldn’t use them that way, either. Just use your name. If your comment is interesting enough, people will click to see who you are. You don’t want to do anything that even appears similar to spam tactics. Another tactic that will make you look like a spammer is leaving lots of short, worthless comments that aren’t interesting just to get your link out there. If your comment isn’t interesting, nobody’s going to click on your link, so what’s the point of that? Spammers leave comments like “Nice Post, I’ll read it for later saving thanks!” Your comments should not sound anything like that.

Links in Comments?

Is it okay to ever leave links in a comment? Yes! But… HARDLY EVER. On the slim chance that your link would add to what’s going on with the post and the comments, and if you can do it so that you don’t look like you’re just using someone else’s blog as your own personal advertising space, then go for it. Do it and be bold about it. Otherwise, JUST DON’T. If you have any doubt, don’t do it. Just leave the best comment you can that adds value to the conversation and gets people curious about you. That’s all you need to do.

You’ll have to take my word for it, but the more popular the Blogger is, the slower they are respond and, for the most part, I often don’t get a response at all.

~ Mitch Joel

If you are selling creative services, one of the things that can get in the way of clear pricing is the belief that what you charge is related to your value as a person. Wrong! It has nothing to do with you.

~ Ilise Benun

Most of it works. Typo spamming, keyword stuffing, social network spamming, video spamming, google spamming, parasite seo, link spamming. It ALL works.

~ Mark Wielgus

Warning… if you leave me a mostly meaningless comment with a keyword in the name field, I will hit the SPAM button and Akismet with cause you pain across the entire WordPress install-base. You have been warned. Moreso, if your comment is added to one of my older blog posts with good pagerank, I will be doubly unforgiving!

~ Alister Cameron

Excellence is highly overrated. The vast majority of clients do not want excellent or amazing or The Best Ever or Jesus Himself Couldn’t Have Written It This Good. They can’t afford Jesus. They can afford Better Than They Could Do Themselves. This means they can afford you.

~ Naomi Dunford

I don’t like it when people put keywords where their name goes in the comments. Aside from my personal preferences, it’s just not a good idea. Here’s why:

• It makes it difficult for me to respond to you properly–how am I supposed to address you?
• It makes you look like a cheap spammer. Don’t give me any shit about that your comment is well-written and that it contributes to the conversation. Nobody will ever know, because they will skip past your spammy keyword name and ignore your comment. You just wasted your own time. I know all the excuses, because I used to do this myself.
• It makes me look cheap, because my blog is filled with comments that look like they were made by spammers. I don’t appreciate you doing that to me, and I have decided I will no longer allow it.
• It simply isn’t appropriate: the comment name field is so that we can see who left the comment, not your website’s name or keywords in the anchor text of the link. It already links to your blog or site. Isn’t that enough? If your comment is good, people will click on that link. Like I already mentioned, a keyword-stuffed name field causes people to pass you by.

I don’t like doing this, but it’s my blog, and I need to maintain its quality in many different ways (I hear you snickering). Many of you who do this are my friends and people that I like and respect. If you consider yourself my friend, you will use only your name in the comments field here from now on.

Otherwise, I will delete your comment. Unlike Alister Cameron, I will not mark your comment as spam, causing you to be added to Akismet’s spammer list.

I’m not angry at anyone and nobody need apologize. I just will no longer allow it. And I suggest that you adopt a similar comment policy. Maybe we should start a movement, similar to “do-follow” and create our own little badge.

Remember: create content for people, not search engines.