Never underestimate the power of inflammatory comments
March 21, 2007 | Comments (7) | Filed under: Blogging
One of the most underrated methods of generating traffic to your blog is to comment on other people’s sites. Writing a comment accomplishes several things that you might not realize. First, it increases your visibility. Simply put, the more sites your name and URL is on, the more chances you have for someone to see the link and stop by for a visit. Secondly, comments are a perfect opportunity to throw down some of your jeopardy style knowledge and contribute to a serious discussion. Potentially, this has the possibility of impressing people enough that they want to visit your site just to see more of what you have to say.
In some cases as well, commenting can increase your search engine rank if the site you post on does not make use of “nofollow” attributes for their links. These types of sites are few and far between these days, but there are many people who support the nofollow movement and keep their blogs open for linking. Also, some search engines simply ignore the nofollow attribute, so it never hurts to get your URL out there.
On the flip side, the third method, and possibly the most underestimated when commenting for traffic, is to write inflammatory comments. Now by inflammatory, I don’t mean jumping in and saying something racist or ignorant, those are likely to just get you banned. What I mean is that instead of popping into a comment discussion and saying something like “I completely agree with your points for reason 1, 2, and 3″ you could say something like “You guys are all crazy, this is why I think so reason 1, 2, and 3.” On most active blogs, I think you’ll find the community is much more interested in contrary opinions then they are in complementary ones. A good inflammatory post can spurn on additional commenting from others who feel the need to attack your post or defend their own. Also, if your comment is well written with solid points to back it up, you’ll probably generate even more traffic from users who agree and don’t post, or from people who don’t agree but want to bring the argument to your own home turf. Sometimes people will just check out your site to find out whether or not you hold the same opinion in your own posts.
For blog owners, inflammatory posts can really help improve traffic to your blog. When people come across your article, they are much more inclined to stick around and respond to an inflammatory comment than they would be to a complementary one. This can increase your number of returning visitors (people like to keep coming back to make sure they get the last word on a subject) as well as improve your overall comment count with debates coming in on both sides of the issue. Obviously it’s important to make sure your comment section doesn’t get out of hand, but it’s alright to let things get a little heated. Your community will benefit from it, I guarantee it.
Examples of inflammatory posts can run the gauntlet from simple things like pointing out spelling mistakes in an authors post (I am sure there are MANY in this one alone) to actually disagreeing with their entire article and highlighting their mistakes. I would recommend, however, that you only post on blogs you are genuinely interested in. This is good advice for any comment you want to post, good or bad. Randomly commenting on sites for the sake of commenting will probably get you no where. Find sites you like, and don’t be afraid to voice your opinion, even if it is contrary to the status quo. I think you’ll find the benefits of being active and opinionated are well worth the effort, in the long run, when your site starts getting more and more traffic because of it.
If you’ve got something to say, whether complementary or preferably inflammatory, lets hear it! The wolves are ready and the comment section awaits you!
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7 people have left comments
Inflammatory comments are the sparks for people to take notice and begin their ‘assault’. What follows next is that you get people to sit straight up and notice something that they haven’t notice before. That’s when the blog start to attract more attention too.
how about if I say:
‘you guys all suck.. I’m the best!’
just kidding of course
You just outlined the whole of Fark.com’s business model. Just read a political thread if you’re unsure.
I use to be afraid of negative or ‘harsh’ comments and I would remove them immediately… but the truth is that bloggers (and companies for that matter) must take the good with the bad when it comes to user-generated content. 1) It shows that humans are actually reading your blog and that you’ve at least written something that was smart enough to spark a conversation. 2) People expect and want to see both good and bad comments. As the good comments validate the bloggers information; the bad provide the point of view that the blogger cannot provide themselves.
Profound post, I must say. Most people wanting to promote their websites will naturally think to use ‘positive’ comments, where they may best be served by the negative. Now keep up the bad work!
I am from Peru. I believe the controvesy generate traffic because the people like it. Dont talk about offensive comments, but comments on weak points about article.
My english is not perfect, but i try