I always hesitate to delete comments instead of posting them. Deletion doesn’t happen often and usually the comment stays in my backend for about a month before I finally decide to axe one.
There are two things that make comments to go that great trash bin in the sky:
- You just put a link. No words. Just link. It’s creepy.
- The FAR more prevalent problem around the internet: Using the company name as the “Name” field and putting in a fantastic, relevant, really nice comment.
I love thought out or funny or nice comments. I’m a blogger, for goodness sake, I’d be weird if I hated comments. But seeing that company name at the top reminds me that this wasn’t done with good intentions, it was done for a purpose. Even if, in the moment, the comment is honest, they are only there because of a desire for company backlinks.
Basically, they’re trying to game Google. I’m not down with that.
Maybe it’s having a husband that’s into SEO and online advertising and knowing how much he thinks that’s (let me just quote him) “A tactic, not a strategy. Not even a good tactic. Really, it’s a crappy tactic that no one should use and why do they do that?” Yeah, he gets riled up when people do things to promote – I use the term super-loosely – their businesses.
So, that’s that. I deleted the really nice comments by the well-meaning but misguided business owner and am moving on from this and all other spam comments on my blog. I’m going to stop worrying so much. It’s just the Internet, right? Right?!
In other news, this is what I refer to as my weekend of love. Today I’ll be studying and getting ahead – yes, you heard me, I said ahead – on schoolwork and will be spending this evening laughing and screaming at the Chippendales dancers at the Horseshoe Casino in Indiana. Last time we went I’m pretty sure I was sick. I remember getting soup for my sore throat.
Sunday I’m having a small girls-party at my house. Sponsored by Sauza Tequila and House Party. There will be snacks, margaritas, and some of my family and friends hanging out. It should be a good time. I don’t know if I’m going to drink or not. I have heard multiple times that alcohol slows the metabolism. But I was fat when I only had liquor twice a year so I’m not sure how much of an impact it has really had on my shape or will have on my shape.
The problem with “general knowledge” about fitness and nutrition is that one size fits one. Not most. Not all. Everyone is so different. The thought that my weight is related to not eating often enough still bugs the crap out of me. Because it’s not what I’ve heard. Eating more to lose weight is the most counter-intuitive thing I’ve ever heard. But it’s my path, and I have to stick with it or face gaining back the weight I’ve lost through Mamavation.
By the way, if I haven’t invited you and you’d like to come by on Sunday, give me a call or shoot me an email and let me know. If you weren’t invited it is probably because I had a brain fart, not because I didn’t want to invite you.
So now I’m going to take a shower and be ready to start on schoolwork bright and shiny at 9am. I’m liking this getting up early for school with S. It means I sleep in an hour and am still ahead of the game on weekends, too.
While I don’t really have a set ‘company’ I’m trying to promote, I will admit that when I first started commenting on people’s blogs I was struck by what name I wanted to use to identify myself. Having multiple blogs really confused me. And I know nothing about Google stats or SEO so I wasn’t trying to manipulate anything, I was just trying to figure out how I wanted to be known around the internet at large. If I comment on a horror blog, I would want them to know me by my horror blog name, for instance. If I comment on a personal blog, I probably want to use MY personal blog. I wasn’t sure I wanted to comment using my personal name because while people who don’t know me might not CARE who “Kristi Dorson” is, they MIGHT be interested in finding out more about “Sepulchre Studios” or “Million Dream Mom”. So I guess in a way I WAS trying to encourage people to come back to my blogs, but I wasn’t commenting just for the sake of traffic either. I only comment when I actually have something I want to say to the people I read. I only read blogs that I find interesting, and I genuinely want to interact with those people.
It ultimately got too confusing and I figured if I want to be an author someday anyway I might as well use my real name, and I just try to link back to the blog I think the person would find most interesting IF they were to click on my name now.
But when I was using my blog names in the ‘name’ field, I would hate to think that people were out there deleting my comments just because I didn’t use my personal name. If it was a total spammy comment, sure, but if it’s a sincerely written comment on what you’ve written, I guess I don’t understand why it’s so tacky to use the business name in the name field.
I think I may have been a bit vague. It wasn’t the business name, and I would have never deleted a comment with your blog name, and heck, I use jennydecki which is pretty much obviously not my real name. But it’s not a business that’s commenting, it’s you. If you had a horror blog nickname, say Vampirella, that would be fine. Sepulchre Studios I don’t know what I’d do with but would probably let it go if it were a normal, non-spammy comment. But if you put in horror movie blog as your name, I’d assume you were doing it for a linkback and wouldn’t let the comment go through. Because “horror movie blog” isn’t a person. Million Dream Mom? Would totally let that go through because it sounds like a handle, not a keyword.
I’m probably just overly sensitive because of the whole “I work for a word of mouth marketing company” thing and see so many examples when I’m checking a blog to see if they have readers or just let all comments go through to make it look like they get a lot of comments and are worth working with.
So if it’s just so people know who you are and they know your names you won’t have a problem – especially because you write kickass comments (let’s be honest, I don’t care WHAT you put in your handle your comments would always go through because they’re great quality) but it’s not always that cut and dry. Besides, if the point was commenting to share your feelings about what someone wrote, why does it matter if the comment gets deleted…it was read by the author, right?
Not trying to argue, just thinking it through in text. It’s been a bad week so if I’m making no sense it’s not intentional and I don’t think I’m being smart. I was just trying to be helpful to bloggers that might run across this and be angling to work with a large company and some etiquette tips from my point of view. But that’s just one blogger’s point of view. Not even that good a blog. No focus, no definite voice. I could be doing so much better. I should work on that.