When I first started WassupBlog all those years ago I had decided to do things differently from my other blogs because I wanted Wassup to be a blog that I enjoyed above all the rest. To do that I needed to increase the amount of participation on the blog itself, because although I’m a bit on the quiet side in real life I make up for it in the blogging world.
When it comes to writing posts and conversing with my commentators it’s like I’m in another world, a world in which I can come out of my shell and be the persona that I always wanted to be. The guy that hold his own when out socialising instead of being the guy standing uncomfortably alone in the crowd.
Joining The DoFollow Movement
To do that I needed to lift the amount of action in the comment section of my posts. I did some research and came across what was called the dofollow movement and those who were a part of it displayed a little icon on their site to show others they were a part of that particular movement. Being a little naive at the time I thought it meant that the those bloggers participating in this group would follow the commentators back to their blog and leave a comment in return.
So, I joined, proudly displayed their little badge on my blog and immediately started to
find other dofollow blogs to comment on. I then waited patiently for all those bloggers to come back and leave a comment on this blog, but nobody did! What the heck?
Naturally I found out later that I completely misunderstood what the dofollow movement was all about. 
It did dawn on me though that I could start my own little movement and so started the You Comment And I will follow you back and leave a comment on your blog. I even came up with my own badge.
To let people know of my new movement I wrote a post called Do You Want More People Commenting On Your Blog which laid out the rules they had to follow if they wanted to be a part of the movement. As a reward I created the F Group page where I placed a link to all those bloggers who qualified as members. If you were to visit that page now you’ll discover that there are no longer any members. It seems that people found the regime of following people back to their blog and leaving a comment all too hard.
Being A Successful Blogger Is Hard
Truth be told, being a successful blogger does require a lot of hard work and it isn’t as easy as all those people out there, you know the ones that tell you all you need to make money on the net is a blog and to subscribe to their newsletter, lead you to believe. I, on the other hand, knew it was going to be a hard slog and I was prepared to work hard to build a successful blog. This involved a strict regime.
How To Build A Successful Blog
- Post Regularly: I would post on a regular basis, at least once or twice a week. I would always try to make those posts a worthwhile read. This meant it had to have something of value to the reader.
- Reply To Every Comment: This was a must and although it does take a lot of time I found it to be most rewarding as with time I developed a bond with many of my regular commentators
- Follow People To Their Blog: Again, this is very time consuming but it is also very rewarding. Done properly you will build your brand and you will build a band of loyal commentators. Most bloggers just flit from blog to blog leaving comments and most of the time you will never see them again. Imagine their surprise when you leave a comment on their blog. A lot of the time they will follow you right back and overtime you’ll find a lot of them will become regulars.
Naturally there are a lot more that you need to do to build a successful blog and I have but barely scraped all that needs to be done. Perhaps you could leave a comment telling us just one important point that you believe is necessary to building one.
I originally started this post to tell you that I am no longer going to follow every single commentator back to their blog. This is partly because my focus is needed elsewhere and partly because Wassup is travelling quite well at the moment. I will continue to reply to everyone though because anything less would be just plain rude.
Resources For Building A Successful Blog
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Tagged with: branding • comments • traffic
Filed under: Blogging Tips
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Informative post as usual, Pete. Lovely spring day here in Wellington too. We have had rain this week too.
Cool, it’s always good to hear that you guys are enjoying so good weather.
I’ve been out of the loop for this past few months in terms of updating my blog and making the rounds of my favorite blogs. Whenever I get to my notebook and connect, all I ever do online is check my facebook account and doodle there.
Among the 3 points you mentioned in this post, Sire, I fail at all of them, for these past few (3?) months at least. Getting back online and seeing this post right away seems like a very good coincidence. :)
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Hey James, if this post served to inspire you then I am grateful that I wrote it. Thanks mate.
G’day Sire, nice Halloweeny design.
Getting quality comments to my blog is always a bit of a challenge so like you I wanted to provide an incentive so I added my blog to the dofollow list. Even then though it’s a bit of a struggle as a lot of the comments I get I can’t use. Having said that I think it’s a fair exchange if someone does take the effort to grace your blog with a comment it’s still worth it.
My best way of getting comments on my blog is to leave good comments on other peoples’ blogs who’s owners have the same attitude as you. What goes around comes around.
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I’t's always worth it Roz as long as they have read your post and left a comment that relates to it. I get a lot of comments from people that have nothing to do with the post and when I do I just delete them.
Hang in there Roz, it may take time but I’ve always found that perseverance will pay off.
Hi Peter
Love the way you are always moving things forward using your own ideas and solutions.
Love the badge – now why didn’t I think of that?
Cheers Peter
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Thanks Keith, I do try mate. As for the badge it served it’s purpose and I’m glad I instigated it in the beginning.
Hi Sire,
It’s nice to see that you’re still following this. I recently returned to my personal blog, after letting it sit idle for about a year. I think I commented here with my gamer name (Moondancer).
Anyway upon my return to personal blogging, it seemed that even more people weren’t following (what I always considered) common courtesy. Sure it takes some work; the interaction you can develop with your visitors can be amazing.
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Actually Opal, like I mentioned in the post, I’m no longer following every commentator to their blog but I will continue to reply to them all.
Sire,
That’s pretty much the way I treat commenters on my blog. It’s a sign of respect from my perspective and it’s a good way to find blogs I never would have know about otherwise.
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Which is something I found out after starting on that venture Ralph.
I don’t know if this is likely to work for everyone, but sometimes if you end a post with a question and ask your readers for their personal opinions, this is likely to encourage comments. Also if you raise important and interesting topics, this is also likely to encourage comments. Another thing, I never comment on blog posts where I feel a sense of arrogance coming from the post, like the blogger wants to prove that he knows it all. So watch out for the right tone.
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All good points Pam, and I’m sure I’ve included them in a post somewhere
I always check out my commenters websites, and try and retweet and leave a comment, unless it’s a spam website. I always reply to each comment also, the one thing I’m guilty is not posting enough, but I’m working on that.
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Jamie, if it’s a spam website I delete their comment as I don’t want my blog associated with them.
I feel that DoFollow is overrated…. You can get a lot of organic traffic these days with little to no backlinks. PageRank rarely updates anymore and Google has indicated it has little weight.
With other SE’s mimicking Google’s SERPS it seems like DoFollow may soon be out.
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I don’t pay much attention to PR either Benjamin but I’m not sure that you get all that much traffic without backlinks. I got my new blog to page one of all the major search engines because of backlinks. I’m sure that if that blog didn’t have any backlinks it wouldn’t be doing so well in the SERPs.
The most intriguing point to me in this post was ‘Follow People To Their Blog’.
It felt better than anything when for the very first time, two topnotch ‘experts’ of my niche commented on one of my posts. And it was only because I left a comment on their post, where commnetluv was enabled.
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Exactly and the fact that you appreciated them doing it probably cemented your ties with them.
Love the halloween background. I agree with you that running a blog is hard. The best way is to comment back on other blogs. Sooner or later they will comment on your blog if you are commenting consistently. It does take a lot of hard work though.
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Hey Tim, anything worthwhile usually takes a lot of hard work.
Extremely useful tips and great analasys, indeed – to increase the amount of comments you need to offer incentives (such as dofollow links and so on) – I know this from experience, a while ago – I was having a few comments on my blog until someday I thought of introducing the CommentLuv plugin that offers backlinks to my commenters, since then I get a lot of comments and I’m happy with it.
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Commentluv is a great plugin Amit and CommentLuv Premium is even better.
It’s just like in real life, as ppl visit you and you visit them regularly a natural relationship begins to develop then the next thing you know you’re drinking buddies and the rest is history
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That could be true if they live in the same neighbourhood Caleb otherwise its more like a case of pen pals
That’s exactly what blogging is for, someone visits your site, you visit theirs and leave a comment. Which will eventually build relationships with other successful or newbie bloggers.
Thanks for the post Sire! :)
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Yep, its the old you scratch my back I scratch yours routine.
Hi Sire,
Interesting post, and to wish that it all worked that way!! I do like your idea much better – kinda do away with the middle man and it’s just you and me. Cool. You don’t seem shy at all either!
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Hi Ann,
So glad you got something from the post. As to me being shy nit’s only when I’m around people I don’t know. If I’m with a group of friends then I’m pretty normal.
Replying to comments is important because it encourages to build loyal readers. A reader visits a blog to learn more and share with others too so by interacting, a reader feels appreciated and valued.
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It’s also important because it shows anyone that comes to your blog that you value your commentators enough by interacting with them.
This is a very informative blog. I do have one and will try the suggestions. I have had this blog for months and it seems I can’t get the right process to increase my comments. Thanks for this one.
Always willing to help Gabriel
Actually, I see my own comments on that original post; been here since the beginning. lol
You know, back then we didn’t have as many blogs to comment on. It seemed we were both always in the same place responding on the same blogs. Then as we started meeting more people we found more blogs and I think we both found out that it’s hard visiting so many new blogs, since new people are always leaving comments on our sites. I still check out a bunch of them but I don’t always comment. It’s not hard commenting, but it’s hard commenting on certain topics to do it justice.
And, as you know, I finally decided I wasn’t commenting on all comments either. The good ones yes, but those in between comments, the ones where you’re not sure if you want to delete it yet it really doesn’t say all that much for you to build a good response to… those I’m not responding to anymore. Saves a lot of stress; who needs more stress in their lives?
Course you should just tell people the truth; all those chess whippings I put on you over the summer wore you out, even if you’re starting to come on lately.
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Hey Mitch, I love those chess whippings mate as it gives me something to build on. Every time you beat me I learn something new about your game which helps me to fine tune mine
As to commenting on other blogs I’ve really cut down quite bit as I’m just so busy doing other things. I’m thinking of putting some of those other blogs up for sale so that I can lighten the load a bit.
Great tips to use to use to get more comments on my blog.
This is first time commenting on WassupBlog so I wanted to say Hi to everyone in this communit. “Hi Everyone” :)
Thanks for sharing this post with us. I really like the idea of a comment for a comment so that one of the first thing I will do.
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Believe me Giles if you can stick to it, and it gets a bit hectic when you start getting a lot of comments, it will help to cement your presence in the blogosphere.
I really think that the most important thing is to post regularly ob your blog and also to build trust with your readers giving them only interesting content.
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Good points Mihal. Another good point is to always check your spelling and stuff before submitting your comment. ;wink_ee:
Agree completely. It’s kind of pointless to constantly publish new posts if they don’t provide anything for the reader. It’s important to be yourself and be personable – not just posting for postings sake. If you don’t have anything (c’mon, there’s always something you could write about!) you could do a ’round-up’ of posts from people’s blogs that frequently comment on your blog :) ~David Walker
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Yep, one should always keep in mind their reader when composing a post because without readers there would be no point writing the post.
Allowing dofollow links and commentluv is sometimes a catch-22 because of spammers, but I do think they help others find your blog, and that leads to more comments. It does require more work to sift through them all, but when you find those really great,thoughtful comments it seems worth the effort.
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Sure, you can get a lot of spammers but they are easily dealt with. Akismet gets the bulk of mine and any that slip through I spam manually so that Akismet can pick it up on the next round. I’ve also got the ability of blacklisting them with my Ajax Edit Comment plugin.
From now on I will definitely be commenting back when people comment on my blog. I think it’s sound advice and a good way to increase followers and engage people.
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Hey Matt,
it’s a great way to get to know your fellow bloggers and reciprocating the comment could turn a casual commenter, on that you would never see again, into a regular visitor.
You asked to leave one quality to build a successful blog. However, I give a small list of important points to build a successful blog. Providing quality content, engaging your readers, periodic posting, guest posting, leaving comments on your fellow bloggers page, building a network on social media. The list is not complete and exhaustive.
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All great points Jane, and to me the most important one would be to engage your readers because without them you wouldn’t have a blog.
Your post is a welcome departure from the multitudes of sites promoting “automated link building”. The basis of my SEO practice has always been to establish relationships, not automated spam messages. Blog commenting works best when it is performed by hand on relevant sites.
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That certainly is my take on it Michael.
Good advice! As a new blogger I sometimes feel like a stalker if I follow people back to their site, even though I know that’s one of the reasons we even do this! Thanks!
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Nah, you’re not a stalker Danny, you’re just being polite
I am a new blogger and still have a ton to learn. Of course my blog is only a couple of weeks old and not much happening. I have read a lot of stuff on SEO etc and found the dofollow ideas great. I love how you came up with the idea of your own dofollow and follow back etc. With all the seo talk about nofollow I havent set mine to follow yet but am considering it as I am getting no respomnses lol… Maybe my writing is just terrible lol.
Thanks for your article,
Dwane
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Hey Dwayne, I’ve been dofollow from the first day this blog went live and I will stay dofollow to the end.
If you have a new blog the best thing you can do is to maintain consistency as far as post goes and make sure you leave a string of great comments on other blogs on a daily basis.
I think having a dofollow policy definitely helps in increasing the comments. Fellow bloggers, who are themselves trying to increase the traffic and rankings of their site need just that little bit extra incentive to take the time to comment.
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It certainly helps as does not putting your users through hoops just to leave a comment.