I mentioned yesterday that I am trying to do a lot of blog commenting. One of the biggest challenges can be finding blogs to comment on. Here’s how I do it.

Follow or No Follow?

I honestly don’t stress that much about follow versus no follow blogs. I focus on providing good comments so that people reading my comment might want to come on over. At the very least there’s a chance of attracting the blog owner, and that can have more benefits than just the traffic. It might be someone to develop an online relationship with, trade posts or comments with, for example.

Finding Blogs

I often start with some of the big, heavily commented blogs in the niche. Comments on these blogs may or may not get you a lot of traffic, depending on what you say and if people tend to follow your links there anyhow.

But I do follow the links other people leave. You see, these are people interested in the niche. They comment on blogs. If they have a link to their own, that’s a blog to comment on.

The chain can sometimes be followed through many blogs.

The advantage to this is that I can then comment on a range of blogs, not just the same few every time. Nothing wrong with building a reputation with your comments on a blog, it can be a big help in building your own reputation, but spreading things out is good also.

Comment Early, Comment Often

If you want to comment regularly on a particular blog, make sure it makes it into your feed reader. I’m currently using Google Reader, but there are many choices out there.

To catch posts early you may want to consider a tool I use – Comment Sniper. It’s from Duncan Carver, and it’s free.

Comment Sniper checks the feeds that you want to read at set intervals and pops up in the corner of your monitor every time that feed shows a new post. This makes it easier for you to get in on the commenting earlier.

The bad part is that it’s really easy to tune it out after a time. I can go most of the day without noticing it if I’m working hard. Of course, that’s also a good thing when you’re focused on a project.

Promote the Blog

I forget this a lot of the time, but one thing I like to do is tweet the blog posts that I comment on. It’s something I’ve found interesting enough to have something to say, and bringing them traffic brings my comment traffic which may just give me a little too. If not, I’ve still shared something I found interesting with my Twitter audience. That’s not a bad thing.

Giving the site a quick thumbs up on StumbleUpon can also work. Not necessarily well, as SU traffic isn’t always the best for clicking around, so don’t use up a lot of your valuable time. Similarly, if you have quick links for it you could add it to your delicious bookmarks, and so forth.

Any promotion you do of someone else’s site should be brief. It’s hard enough to promote your own site, but remember that those views of your comment on other sites can help you out too.

Will All This Bring Tons of Traffic?

Pfft! No. Probably not.

So why bother focusing on the people instead of the search engine value?

Because you don’t want to look like a comment spamming idiot, of course. Focus on the people and your comments last. Those who do click through to your site are more likely to stick around. And you’ll have a better chance of building a relationship with the blogger whose blog you’re commenting on, which can lead to links in posts or guest posting opportunities, and those can lead to more traffic.

Twitter has turned into quite the phenomenon. It’s easy to get started, if somewhat challenging sometimes to think of things to say. It’s used by people from all walks of life.

Then there are the people who advertise on their Twitter streams. There are several services that place ads in your Twitter stream or allow you to do so. But there’s a lot of controversy about placing ads in your Twitter stream. It even made the New York Times (may require log in or search Google News).

I have to admit, the earnings they quote for people with big follower lists are pretty impressive. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have misgivings about Twitter stream advertising.

On the one hand, tweeting for me is about building my business. If advertising brings in money and isn’t excessive, is it really a problem? I advertise here, after all. Properly disclosed, such as with the #ad hashtag, it’s not that objectionable.

Is it?

Robert Scoble has some good points about the problems with advertising in your Twitter stream. Just on a personal level of not wanting to offend too many followers, Twitter advertising has issues. Disclosure helps, but is it enough? Value to advertisers, as Scoble points out, is another issue.

One important consideration if you do want to advertise in your Twitter stream is whether or not you tweet enough other things. Even if you only post an ad once a day is that made up for by what you say the rest of the time? In quality and in quantity?

And then there’s the simple fact that if you want to advertise it’s your business, so long as you disclose properly. You may be gambling on your followers, but that’s a choice you can make.

There are options to being paid by an ad network, of course. You can write your own ads for products you like. I would expect a relevant product could generate a sale or so. You have to think about why it is people are subscribe to your stream to have a chance of such ads paying off, and disclosure is still an issue.

Always, always, always, be sure that you’re providing value to your Twitter stream. If you’re not providing something people want, whether you advertise or not, people aren’t going to pay attention to your tweets.

Edited to add: Just came across this post from Andy Beal in my Twitter stream: Poll: Will You UnFollow Those That Place Ads in Their Tweets? – so far 44% say yes!

I’ll admit that I’m not the most consistent of Twitter users. Some days it’s hard to think of things to say in so few characters. Tweeting blog posts from this site is easy. Saying more isn’t always so easy. I’ve never been a chatterbox and probably self censor too much at times.

Which is probably better than too little. There are some things about me and my life you really don’t need to know.

I’ve been focusing on tweeting a little more often about what I read online now, at least when it gets my attention a little better than average. And especially if the post drives me to comment. If it’s good enough to make me want to say something back, why not tweet it too?

Tweeting something I’ve commented on does more than promote the blog post. It also means that more people might read my comment and follow through to my site. At least that’s one theory I’m going on. I try to keep from posting nonsense, as I’d rather be a real part of the conversation and not the one who comments just for the link. Even though I like the links, follow or nofollow.

Of course, tweeting an article to my followers means that I’m exposing it to people who already read my stuff. But there’s always the chance for a retweet. If not, hopefully people kind of enjoy what I’m finding.

I do post bits about my day, naturally. Such as yesterday when I had a bee land on my hand. Sometimes getting the blood really flowing in the morning doesn’t take caffeine. Or the occasional tip I think of that can be expressed in so few characters.

Using Twitter properly doesn’t include being too self promotional, no matter how the talk of tweeting my posts and other people’s posts I’ve commented on may sound. There’s a balance between promoting my business and being someone worth following.

One thing I’ve done is to separate my business tweeting from my “me” tweeting. Having more than one account means that followers have more of a feel for what they’re getting into.

On any account, of course, I’ll engage with people who talk back to me if I catch it soon enough. With three kids, sometimes I’ll tweet and then be away from the computer for hours. Replying to someone that late just feels awkward. Kind of like bringing up a conversation that you dropped hours ago in real life. It works with some people but you have to know them really well. Most of my Twitter followers I don’t know that well.

Yes, I did it. After hearing so many people rave about Twitter, I signed up today. We’ll just have to see how it goes.

In the first few minutes, it’s kind of fun. Very simple, just write a short post about what you’re doing. You have just 140 characters to get your point across.

I can see where it could be both a time saver and a time waster. The small amount of space means you can’t say much. But there could be that temptation to overdo it and update far too often. I’ll have to make sure that I work on balancing that.