Why All Business Owners Should Read and Comment on Blogs
As a business owner, it is important to read and comment on other blogs targeted at your niche. There are several reasons why this approach can be beneficial for your business.
Visibility
When you comment on other people’s blogs, you become known in the space. Especially when the blog is well-known to your niche, and has a lot of traffic, every comment you make provides you with visibility, both to the author of the blog (who is influential), as well as to the readers. The more often you comment, the more visible you are. Believe me, blog writers know who the regular commenters are.
Knowledge
There are incredible ideas being generated right now, across the blog-o-sphere. And those ideas MAY be the ideas that your niche is accepting as the latest and greatest truth. If you’re not aware of those ideas, you may miss the boat and appear uninformed. Not to mention the fact that when you write your own blog posts with your take on those great ideas, you are contributing to a larger conversation, giving you credibility. Plus, it just plain old gives you more ideas as to what to write about on your blog.
Incoming Links
Every time you make a comment on another blog, you have the opportunity to include a link to your own site. Each one of those links is counted by search engines, which can improve your search engine ranking. (But, as a general rule, don’t embed the link into the text of your comment, because that can get your comment flagged as spam.)
Relationships
It is imperative to your business and brand that you build a good reputation online. One of the most powerful ways to do this is through your participation in online communities where you build relationships. Well, some of the most popular blogs in your space are an extended part of those communities, and when you contribute your thoughts to a discussion through the comments on those blogs, you are engaging the community and building relationships. And that gives you credibility that will benefit your business. Commenting on other blogs can be a powerful, effective part of your overall online media strategy. By contributing to the conversations going on within your niche, you gain credibility which establishes you as a thought leader people will consider when they have a need for your product or service. That said, do NOT use the comments in other blogs for self-promotion…that will simply irritate people and get you categorized as spam. But by providing thoughtful commentary relevant to the topic of each blog post, you can greatly benefit your business.