How A Digital Marketing Agency Should Do Comment Marketing

By Author: Johnny Susan
Total Articles: 1
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The goal of commenting on blogs by influential writers is not just scoring brownie points or gaining leverage in SEO or just commenting for back links. There is a thin line dividing the Black Hat stuff from the White Hat techniques and on that thin line is the Grey area that most SEOs are trying to pick. For a Digital Marketing Agency, it is important to have a good content marketing strategy. Why this is important? Well, for a digital marketing agency, comment marketing will get them the all necessary visibility and position its stand in the community.

Learn to Say ‘No’

Comment marketing will not pay off if you just agree to things all the time, the basic truth about getting comments to work for you is to create a drama of conflicting views! ‘Great work, keep more coming’ will do no good; your voice will vanish in the din of similar comments. Instead of talking nonsense or just inflammatory, you should add value and make comments that add value to the content and the comment stream.

It is not necessary for a commenter to agree to all what ...
... the article enunciates; there might be points where the commenter has better detail or a different view. If you go about repeating what the article says and share it on your Google+, you will have very little out of it. I would rather write what I think about the topic, in very clear terms and expect the writer to respond.

Respect & Positiveness in Comments

Respect is very important, because hurtful words might get you a few likes or a few shares on Google+ or if you are extremely lucky and have a very valid point, you might catch the attention of the writer, but that is very rare and you will build no trust in the commenter’s ring. This might be a short term gain for you, but in the long run, positive views with a tinge of respect will help you get better at commenting and ultimately getting backlinks.

One more advantage of disagreeing, respectfully, is that you will have more people adding their views along your lines and say why they agree with you and disagree with the writer. In the past I have gathered conflicting views on blog posts and used it to make new content. But, as always be professional about it and keep the post positive instead of finding faults like an old lady with a different author!

The advantage of doing this: you will have your own gang of followers and commenters who will add value to your post.

Link Sharing --- The Issue Most Digital Marketing Agencies Do Wrong

Now this is where I stumbled a lot when the rules against spam linking got stringent. I always had good intentions when sharing links on the comment section, but the automatic bots always thought that I was attempting to spam the website! Here is a trick: remove the http:// section and you should be good.

It is worthy of remembering that the link has to add value to the conversation and look non-spammy. A good rule is to make it clear in your comments what followers of that link should expect to find at the other end. And, make sure that the link is functional and needs no registration to use (if possible).

Targeting the Right Candidate

Figure this one out, your comments on a small to medium blog against a huge blog. Which among the two do you think will get you more attention? It is better to be the big fish in the small pond rather than get lost in the ocean.

Target websites or blogs that have relatively a lesser number of readers. Small blogs like comments, hence chances are high that they will attempt to reciprocate. Start building a profile around 20 to 30 such blogs and participate in its activity, In time you will have a list of blogs that follow your link and those that do not. Let’s say you had 30 blogs, of which 10 do nothing much - remove them and add newer blogs to your list and engage with them.

Tips to find the perfect blog for commenting:

1. Make use of Google Reader and create a list of blogs that are in the same niche
2. Look at the titles and the description of the blog
3. Do a quick search to find the keywords that matter to you

At the end of the exercise you will have a good list of prospective partners.

Using the Right Language

A tell tale sign of Black hattery is use of tongue twisters, industry words and cliches. People have had enough of black hat stuff and they are sensitive enough to detect the intent in your language and steer clear of you, even if you meant no harm.

Use simple language and do not try to sell things. Influence the authors and let them spread the word. If you find a blog where you have a good size of potential customers, you would not want to piss them off by selling your products and blowing your own trumpet. Subtlety is the operative word, but do not try to push your product on the sly.

Finally, every digital marketing agency should have a positive intention for content marketing and the techniques should be as white hat as possible, occasional grey hat methods may come in handy but it best avoided, and whatever you do, never think of black hat techniques.