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Using blog comments as an effective marketing tool

August 5, 2007 · Posted in India blogs 

“I am a journalist with a travel Magzine and basically covering travel portals these days recently came across ABC it is quite a user freindly website.”

“Anyone tried ABC ? My colleague told me about this site two weeks back - it’s http://www.abc.com - now my favourite - simple, easy to use, and I have always found better fares and more options than on other sites”

“I find http://xyz.com a comprehensive travel booking hub”

These are a few sample comments from my blog.

Notice anything wrong with them ? These,in my opinion, are some of the perfect examples of blog marketing gone bad.

Blogs have undoubtedly emerged as a great new marketing medium. Heck, if executed properly, even blog comments can serve as a good marketing tool.

Considering that I often write about Indian startups and compare Indian verticals, my blog gets a lot of comments from other competitors, who often leave anonymous, self-promotional comments extolling their own company. And trash competitors. Some borderline into the spamming category.

After witnessing a lot of these comments, I felt that there was some room for education on how to effectively harness blog comments for marketing purposes.

So, here’s a quick and dirty list of do’s and dont’s on using blog comments as an effective marketing tool:

1) DONT SPAM !! A couple of comments on relevant posts are perfectly fine. But if you start spamming, chances are you will rub the blogger the wrong way, who may end up deleting all your comments. This also may have a negative effect towards building the blogger relationship.

2) Dont leave anonymous comments. Anonymous comments are an act of cowardice. Besides, it doesnt take more than two seconds to figure which camp you belong to.In my opinion,its better to be upfront about your affiliation (probably include a small signature) when you leave a comment.

3) Rather than leaving meaningless comments like “XYZ provides you the best service”, “I have used ABC - I think they are very good” - Provide some value, some perspective, some input as part of your comment. Believe me, this will encourage the blogger, as well as the blog audience to take a peek at your comment.

4) Dont use offensive language to trash your competitors. This is just basic etiquette and simply put - very wrong

5) Take a minute to realize what the post is about. Dont leave a comment about how great xyz is on a totally unrelated post.

6) Finally, it is essential that you understand what a blog is. A blog is not a link directory. A blog is not a classifieds site. A blog is a passionate, conversational medium. Comments are your means of conversing with the blogger and the blog audience. How you leverage these comments to the maximum benefit and at the same time, use them towards building a meaningful blogger relationship is entirely upto you.

I’d like to hear what others, including all of you marketing gurus out there, have to say about this.


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Comments

5 Responses to “Using blog comments as an effective marketing tool”

  1. trakin on August 5th, 2007 8:43 am

    excellent pointers Pranav…
    I too have recd. fare share of these kind of comments, but I publish all of them, after all one has freedom of speech- read “commenting”.
    Although these kind of spammers do exists, comments are a great medium of interaction and clarification, either from a competitor or self. Recently, I wrote about a start-up which may not have been too flattering, however, the comments by changed my perception to large extent..

  2. pranav on August 5th, 2007 10:59 pm

    Trakin,

    I publish most of them too. Almost everything goes, but I still have an unofficial comment policy - any offensive, spamming comments — they are out…

  3. Gaurav on August 5th, 2007 11:39 pm

    I still see one of those comment in the recent comments :).

    Well said Pranav.I think it is a very good opportunity to showcase your product/service in the comments where one of your competitors is being talked about. Doing right is the key. Entrepreneurs and people posting on their behalf need to learn to acknowledge their competitors instead of using offensive language or using no-reasoning-comments to let them down.

  4. Ramjee on August 6th, 2007 3:02 am

    It’s sad that people resort to such kind of cheap tactics while commenting.
    One thing I hate is anonymous comments. However, I was fortunate enough that some of the people who leave such comments on my blog also leave there name at the end of the message.
    I am fine with this kind of a behavior (logging in to leave just one comment is a hassle I can relate to).

    rAm

  5. Smit on December 22nd, 2007 11:46 pm

    This is a great tutorial thanks!