How Not to Interact Online
- 9 Comment
The web we use these days is all about being social and interacting with others. Whether its posting a comment on a blog or Tweeting on your Twitter account, every action you make has an impact on your personal brand. And seeing as your brand is your most valuable marketing tool, its in your best interest to look after it.
Here are my tips on what NOT to do online.
- Post generic comments on blogs – “nice post” may sound like your complementing the blogger, but really you are just leaving a lifeless, generic comment that adds no value to the conversation. Keyword “value”!
- Post comments promoting your products – there are plenty of other more suitable places to do this. And besides, your comment already links back to your site.
- Respond to Trolls – Trolls are those who comment with the sole purpose of being negative and trying to milk a reaction from you. Get over your ego, ignore them and don’t honour them with any response.
- Only post about your site on Twitter – Its easy to post about yourself. Why not do something challenging and post about others. Talk about others and they will talk about you.
All of this has been said before – in fact its probably said better here, but the big point I would like to make is adding “value”. If you can contribute to a conversation no matter what form its in (blog, comment, tweet) you are on the right track.
Make sure you follow me on Twitter, check out my blog or you can contact me anthony@feint.me – I would love to hear your thoughts on interacting through social media
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9 Comments on this post
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jackie sheeler said:
i couldn’t agree more — especially about the “check out my crap” type of a comment. these are really annoying. god knows there is enough advertising on the web without letting it seep into what are supposed to be thoughts generated by a post.
“nice post” is of course less annoying than spam type material, but boring (and lazy) as all hell.
jackie sheelers last blog post..california, exploding; lieberman, imploding (hopefully)
November 10th, 2008 at 5:55 am -
Minnesota Attorney said:
As a blog owner, I have struggled with a good policy on comments. Currently, I have all comments marked with NoFollow and don’t have a Top Commenters plugin. As a result, I get very few comments, but the comments are generally valuable and relevant to the post topic. However, I am impressed by other blogs that reward those who comment with a Top Commenters plugin and NoFollow comments, because those sites appear to have thriving readership. But I wonder how much time the blog owner spends moderating comments.
Minnesota Attorneys last blog post..Minnesota Tax Attorney: Tax Preparation Tips
November 10th, 2008 at 6:45 am -
teraOm said:
You are right about the twitter things. If you just post your articles on twitter, you may lose followers. Ypu might want to use a twit this plugin. It has option which decides to twit it. So only best posts get tweeted.
November 10th, 2008 at 3:03 pm -
Anthony said:
teraOm, yeag I have a plugin that will post my posts on Twitter but I only use it occasionally, and write a custom message to go with it so it feels more personal
November 10th, 2008 at 5:42 pm -
save and go green said:
I hate people who just post “great post”. I sometimes post that, but I make sure to follow it up with a legitimate reaction to the post. I agree with Anthony that the post should feel more personal that just a small phrase.
save and go greens last blog post..Living in Green Spaces Reduce Health Gap
November 10th, 2008 at 7:50 pm -
17 years old blogger-Oke Timothy said:
To me, I think honest comments to a post is something that is worthwhile. For bloggers that are just starting to get traffic to their website, I think honest comment or even a ‘great comment’ as usual is a pat on the back but when you have so much traffic and comment then I think only the most worthwhile comment is what the blogger would prefer. This is what I can infer with my little intelligence. Thanks Oke Timothy.
17 years old blogger-Oke Timothys last blog post..CommentLuv needs updating on this site. Please download the latest version and install it on your site. This message will apear during the first 10 minutes of each hour. This remote script will cease returning posts in 7 days
November 18th, 2008 at 7:08 am -
Tom Lindstrom said:
Personally, I never approve any comments who are just there to get link juice or self promoting.The “did you pass math” wordpress plugin works really well and keeps a lot of the spam away too.
A good blog comment needs to be useful and helpful in some way.It also brings fresh content to the blog you are commenting on.If you post something valuable, you deserve to get a link back.
I agree with the Twitter argument.Many people have made it into a self promotion tool.
November 19th, 2008 at 12:09 pm -
Gerald SEO Tips Blog said:
I would say the generic comment one is one of my pet peeves big time! The Twitter one is a good point as well. It drives me nuts when I follow someone new and they start bombing their own links left and right. Basically what I do is try to follow like minded individual and I tweet many various resources that I think they will find interesting that way people view you as a worthy resource and not a spammer. I’ll tweet when I have a new blog post but this is like one out of a hundred tweets so the ratio is very low. Twitter is by the way one of my favorite social platforms as well.
Gerald SEO Tips Blogs last blog post..5 Free SEO Tools You’re Probably Not Using Yet
November 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am -
Troy - VIPMillionaireLeague said:
lol GOODPOST!! jk. But i understand completely, I kind of hate when people just leave a 2-3 word comment on something, somewhat devaluing what you just wrote.
January 26th, 2009 at 6:17 pm