* Do your comments get noticed by the authors of the blogs you comment on?

* How often do blog authors acknowledge and respond to your comments?

* Are you leveraging the opportunity to earn more inbound visits to your blog or website from other commenters who might want to learn more about you because you left a thoughtful and helpful comment?

I'm currently reading the outstanding book, Inbound Marketing, by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (they are the founders of HubSpot).  This book is filled with many pearls for any professional marketer about inbound marketing, and provides clear examples that great marketing isn't limited by the size of your wallet but it's actually your individual creativity and investment of time.

This book has many insights to help professional marketers find ways to increase the online visibility of their companies and thought leadership. One of the many insights they focus on is commenting on blog as a strategy for building your online reputation.  For this post, I will focus specifically on being a first-mover in commenting on your favorite blogs so you or your company have better chance of getting noticed by the blog author or other commenters. 

Before we go into the specifics of the post, I want to explain how I'm a big fan of the company HubSpot and am an avid participant in their Inbound Marketing University (IMU) curriculum.  IMU helps professional marketers from both large and small organizations make better online marketing decisions regarding search engine optimization (SEO), social media, blogging, lead nurturing, and many other important topics.  The content shared in IMU is outstanding, and I highly recommend studying its content which HubSpot generously shares online. 

Build Your Online Credibility by Commenting on Blogs

"Street cred" in the online world takes time and patience. Halligan and Shah spend a good portion of their inbound marketing strategy on commenting on the blogs of influential bloggers.  Building relationships with bloggers starts by commenting on their blogs, and it's a great way to begin building your individual or corporate blogging reputation about a specific industry or online marketing topic (i.e., personal branding, social media strategy, web analytics, etc). 

As I've analyzed the inbound link traffic or referring websites to my blog, I've noticed more traffic is coming from the blog posts I comment on.  If I write a comment that other commenters deem credible, my web analytics follow-up indicates that other commenters are checking out my blog to learn more about me.  These new blog visitors provide a great opportunity to potentially convert new visitors to new subscribers.

Get Noticed by Blog Authors & Their Readers

Halligan and Shah point out that you don't want to be commenter #14 because your comments can be lost in the shuffle.  Whenever possible, make it a goal to be one of the first three commenters on a newly published post.  How I wish I'd implemented this strategy many months ago when I first started commenting (but that's okay, it's part of the learning process).

I diligently comment on my favorite blogs ~5 to 7 times per week.  Now, I respond faster to post my comments and implement a smarter strategy that increases my chances of:

* Earning a response from the blog author and
* Attracting inbound traffic to my blog from other commenters

Use a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) So You Respond Faster

One of the best ways to ensure you are one of the first two to three commenters on a post is to create a heads-up-display (HUD) in your iGoogle Home Page.  Halligan and Shah recommend setting up a HUD or other monitoring tool via RSS feeds so you're in touch with what's going on in the blogosphere.  By the way, this method also works great for Competitive Intelligence gathering (and will probably be the subject of a future blog post).

I monitor the RSS feeds from my favorite blogs to look for newly published posts.  This is a more efficient way to stay-up-to-date on great blog content and look for blog commenting opportunities.  I initially tried monitoring individual RSS feeds but I found this too cumbersome.  A quick scan takes only a few moments (about the length of time to sip and drink my morning cup of coffee).

How-to-Video: iGoogle HomePage Heads-Up-Display (HUD)

BTW, let me know if you get a kick out of the screen reflection of my Sunday Morning BedHead!  After all, I want to provide some on-screen entertainment – LOL and thanks for reading if you've made it this far.

Turn Your iGoogle Homepage Into a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) to Monitor Your Favorite Blogs from Tony Faustino on Vimeo.