How and When to Leave Blog Comments

When we get a new client, we often compare the internet to a foreign country. It truly is its own culture, and building a web site there (aka a storefront) is like setting up business in a foreign country. Even though most of what you do will be in English (for most of my readers - their native language) it is still foreign. We like to think of ourselves as tour guides who will help you not only enjoy your trip, but actually want to enjoy it as a second home!

In that spirit, today's blog post is a little etiquette lesson in how to "act like a local." I (a person with web in my DNA) find it amazing and informative that CC Chapman can get a ton of response from a Podcamp lecture just by asking people to go leave a comment on a blog. It appears that people are confused about how to do this, when to do this, why to do this, and so forth. Just like blogging a lot of people face that daunting question: What on earth will I say? So let me be your friendly tour guide.

Let's make it stupid simple. I like stupid simple. I think hard on complex things most days and being able to "dumb it down" is something I really appreciate!

When to Comment

• Anytime you have an opinion to add to a conversation.
• When you want to promote your products and services (Just don't be crass about it. Add something of value to the conversation.)
• When someone has featured you on their page or site. (If you know about it or your blog software can track inbound links, this is VERY easy). I consider it one of the top ten blogger "miss manners" recommendations. This one is probably the most neglected, yet in my world, the most important.
• Timing can be important, especially if you are tracking A-list bloggers. Our former client, Mary Schmidt took to blogging really well and paid attention to when well-known excellence author Tom Peters would typically post a new blog. Mary made sure she was available to be one of the first commenters. It helped her get noticed and become a key influencer in Mr. Peters popular blog discussions. And yes, it has helped her build her consulting business,

What to Comment

• See above for initial instructions.
• Add your opinion - especially if it is against the flow. Life is not black and white - virtually every conversation is well-served by a range of perspectives.
• Details baby, details. The more specific you can be, the better. Cite examples, give props to others, share your experience. It's all good.

Why to Comment

• Because your point of view is just as relevant as anyone else's.
• Because it is a great way to build your personal or company brand.
• Because it creates inbound links to your site, which helps the search engines rank your site higher.

How to Comment

• There is always a place for your name. You can put anything you want in there! It is what will be displayed on the blog. Some people consider this a personal banding opportunity, and you can say, "Roxanne Darling" or "Nerd Queen" or even enter Rox of beachwalks.tv. Like all things, you can be savvy or you can be obnoxious, and all points in between. As my little 2-year old friend Kaile is learning to do, "make good choices."
• Email: you will be required to enter an email address. If the software is set up correctly, your email address will never be displayed. It is to sort you from the spammers. If you do not enter a URL (see next item) some blog software will show your email. As a precaution, always enter a URL! (if you don't have a web site, you can always link to another web site - a cause you support or CNN or whatever. Best to have your own site of course.)
• URL: Universal Resource Locator, aka your web site address. Be sure to link to individual pages on your web site when that is more appropriate to the discussion at hand. Just navigate to that page on your site, copy the page address, and then enter that into the "URL" field as you are leaving your comment. UPDATE: Consider also linking to you social network pages, like Twitter or your LinkedIn Profile or even your Flickr page if that is your primary home on the web.

How much should you budget for monthly website expenses?

Now that most businesses and organizations have a web site, they are used to the line item in the budget for initial development. And for many, getting a site up and running is such a grueling task that they are ready to sit and rest on their laurels for a while after launch! We completely understand; we wish we could take a vacation for a few days after each site launch too.

But really, after launch is when the fun begins. Ideally, your web site has been built so you can play with it as often as you like, and as easily as filling out a web-based form. You are now set free to talk to your customers, to tell the world all about how special you are and why your products and services are the better choice.

As you use your site more, you will run into wanting to do things that you don't how to do or that you don't know if your site can do for you.

1. Training
   • Getting your content to look and speak well is an art that goes far beyond just typing into a form. Photos and graphics for example add tremendous value to a web page, IF they are sized and processed for the web and you know how to add title tags, alignment, and can get the text to wrap around them correctly.
   • Using blog software is easy if you want to do the basics. But once you want to do power blogging, you'll want to know about ping servers, trackbacks, blogrolls, how to find A-list blogs, and so much more.
   • Strategy makes a huge difference too. Using the software to accomplish a marketing or communication goal is not obvious because most people don't have the web in their DNA. It's much more than just remembering to add your web address on all your printed material. It's remembering to blog after you've been invited somewhere and sharing your experience and a public mahalo while linking out to others you met. It's called link love and it's one of the web's power currencies right now.
2. Feature Upgrades
   • Just like anything else you own, if you use it even a little, you are going to want to trick it out. Maybe you want to add an extension or plug-in or social networking application that adds power to your site.
   • Maybe you want to dress it up with a more sophisticated design or add some audio or video.
   • Maybe your competitors started selling directly online, and now you want some e-commerce features.
   • And just like your house or your boat, there is virtually no end to upgrades and widgets you can install to make your site perform better for you.
3. The Unexpected
   • It could be anything right? That's why it is unexpected. Life happens.
   • Even the most user-friendly sites still have a few things that are deep in the code and are better left to your developer to handle for you, like periodic software upgrades.

So bottom line, what should you budget for this ongoing support and maintenance? I think a good rule of thumb is at least 15-25% of initial site development costs to be budgeted over the following 12 months. The less you spend initially, the higher the percentage on average to dedicate to upgrades and support.

It's just no fun (and poor business planning) to build yourself a nice new site and not be able to add a new "work station" or some "grounds maintenance" when the situation arises. More and more, the company web site is becoming its most important communication, sales, and even operations tool. So budget accordingly to keep it humming along nicely.

P.S. To my blogging students: I could have written this post in about half the time if I did not include all the links. But it would have less impact and would have been less useful to you readers who want more resources on these topics. In the process, I actually came across some new interesting blog posts! Just right-click on each link to open it in a new window so you can continue reading here. And I could have saved another 10 minutes by not looking for the confused puppy pic. But how much were you drawn in by that one photo??