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The albatross, one of the largest flying birds but also one of the most efficient, can soar incredible distances with minimal effort.
How would you like to spend less time commenting and produce amazing results? I’ve always been a fan of working smarter, not harder. As a general rule, unless safety is an issue, efficiency is more of concern of mine than effectiveness. As Pareto’s Law suggests, I like to get 80% of the way there while spending only 20% of my time.
Each blogger has his/her own definition of what success means. For some, it may be reaching a particular Alexa rank or PageRank. For others, it may be a earning certain dollar amount or better yet, a sustained dollar amount over a period of time. However, there are some who have more community-related goals, like building relationships through healthy dialog via their posts’ comments.
When I posted How I get more comments than blogs that have 10 times more traffic, I received a good number of comments and emails. You can read the traffic article’s comments for yourself but a number of the emails asked for even more depth, specifically, how I find time to comment on so many other blogs. Time is our greatest ally but it can also be our biggest foe.
Not every visitor is the same
If you believe that every visitor provides the same value to your site, then you need to wake up a bit. They’re not the same! You should be prioritizing your blog visits, frequenting those that provide more value more often. I’ve had hundreds of bloggers leave comments on Free Blog Help but you won’t see me visiting each of their blogs every day. Even if it were possible to do, the burnout would settle in after a week!
Knowing that, I have to group the blogs that I visit based on what I get in return. As I said in many previous articles, I don’t keep score. I don’t mind leaving five comments on a particular blog and only get one in return but I do have to choose which blogs to frequent because my time is valuable. Eventually, that blog moves down my priority list and someone else gets bumped up.
My value-driven commenting system
I basically have the blogs that I visit saved in four folders (I use Bookmark All Tabs… in Firefox); each serving its own purpose. Obviously by grouping them this way, I’m also able to open all of the blogs within each bookmark folder in less than a second.
Tier 1 – Big time (~10 blogs)
These are the who’s who of my niche. Every time I post a new article, I’ll go to these sites and leave comments. Every once in a while, one of these guys pops in and leaves a comment in return but that’s a bonus, not the objective. Most of these blogs are DoFollow and provide CommentLuv but I actually get a lot of direct traffic just by intelligently participating. These sites typically have an Alexa rank of under 10,000 so I know they’re getting decent traffic.
3x week, 30 minutes = ~90 minutes a week
Tier 2 – Regulars (~15 blogs)
These are people who usually swing by here several times a week and leave a comment or two. If I personally go offline for a week, I believe these folks would still be here leaving comments since their participation is always unsolicited and unprompted. As a result, I’d do the same for them. I make it a point to visit their site at least once a week. Often times, I get there twice or more.
2x week, 30 minutes = ~60 minutes a week
Tier 3 – Semi-regulars (~50 blogs)
This group are people who are similar to my regulars but simply don’t visit quite as frequently. I’ll see them a few times a month and therefore, I usually do the same. So when time permits, I’ll fire off this bookmark group and comment on some of their posts. This occurs about every other week, usually while I’m watching a football game.
1x every other week, 60 minutes = ~30 minutes a week
Tier 4 – Every other commenter (over 100 blogs)
Anyone who left a comment who has not graduated to the aforementioned tiers is in here. That said, they can’t stay on this list forever. About once a month, sometimes longer, I’ll pop into these blogs and contribute. They somehow found me in the first place and left a comment. Therefore I’ll reciprocate at the time of their comment and again when I open this group. In many cases, they come right on back to return the favor. Eventually, if after leaving multiple comments and getting nothing in return, I remove them from this group. No hard feelings and they can always pop back into this folder by leaving a comment again.
1x every month, 120 minutes = ~30 minutes a week
Of course, every once in a while, I’ll review these bookmarks and move some of these blogs around. So if a regular disappears for over a month, they may be moved to my semi-regular folder or if a semi-regular starts commenting more frequently, I’ll slide them up to the regulars folder.
Just a final caveat, none of this would work if the comments that you leave are spammy and don’t provide any value. You don’t need to leave 100-word comments every time but do your best to actually contribute to the discussion. Leaving comments like “Good job” or “I agree” won’t cut it.
Wrap-up
So all in all, it takes me about 3.5 hours a week to comment on other sites. Add that with writing articles (3x week, 1 hour = 3 hours a week), reciprocating every comment on this site (every day, 20 minutes =~2 hours a week), and answering emails (every day, 5 minutes = ~30 minutes a week), it takes me a total of 9 hours a week to develop content and comment on other sites, which of course averages just a tad over an hour a day. I think that’s pretty darn efficient.
Although this commenting system may or may not work for you, it certainly has worked well for me. It’s not immensely complex nor scientific but it’s one that fits my schedule and gets me the results that I’m looking to achieve. Quite frankly, it gives me the biggest bang for my buck.
What’s your commenting system?