You can listen to the podcast, download the MP3 or subscribe via iTunes at the Authors Access website. It’s free.

Blog commenting can be a good strategy for getting links and traffic to your blog. Commenting is most effective when (1) you comment on blogs in the same niche as your blog and (2) the links are do-follow, meaning that the search engines give you credit for the links. The problem is finding the blog posts on which to comment.

The CommentLuv Enabled Blog Search Engine makes it easy to find blog posts that are in your niche. Even better, all of the blogs that turn up in the search results use the CommentLuv WordPress plugin. That means many of them offer do-follow links from comments, and they may even give you a link to your choice of up to ten of your recent posts.

Just go to the search engine page and enter your email address. You will have to confirm your email address the first time. Then enter your keywords and find quality blogs where you can leave comments and get links. Easy as pie! (Actually, it’s easier. Have you ever baked a pie–it’s a lot of work. But I digress.)

There is another side to this blog search engine that may be even better. When you install CommentLuv Premium on your blog, your posts will be included in the search results so you get more readers and more comments. How cool is that? (Very cool, right?)

Go to the CommentLuv Enabled Blog Search Engine.

Download CommentLuv Premium for your WordPress blog.

I’ve heard many people in the publishing industry say, “Every author must have a blog,” but is blogging really effective? Every author must decide for him or herself, but first, it’s important to understand what a blog is and how to use it effectively.

A blog is a shortened version of the term “web log.” It’s basically a journal or diary that is online for the public to read. Businesses use blogs to share information about their products, new items in their markets, and other information relevant to their industry. Blogging is similar for authors who want to connect with readers, books being the product and readers being the customers who want the product—at least they should after reading your blog.

Blogging is an excellent marketing strategy for authors because it’s a way for them to tell their stories, to talk about their books, to share information, items of common interest to readers, and ultimately, to get people to buy their books. Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, most authors are telling a story, and a blog is just another way to tell a story—the story about you the author—in a more personal way that will get readers to like you and want to hear more of what you have to say.

Having a blog does not mean just posting whatever and whenever. As an author, you want to have a strategy for your blog posts. Ultimately, your goal is to sell your books to your potential readers. Make sure your posts reflect that strategy. If you’re writing romance novels, it doesn’t make sense to post about your gardening interests—unless you can tie those into your book—for example, if your heroine’s name is Cecilia and she is a gardener in your book, then you could be creative and present Cecilia’s gardening tips.

Following are some key tips to make your blog effective so it will engage your readers:

• Have an attention grabbing headline.
• Keep the content relatively short—just a few paragraphs—a chapter a day from your book may be too long, so spread it out over a few posts—remember people online have short attention spans.
• Post selections from your books.
• Write about why you wrote your book—tell the background story.
• Give sneak peeks of future books or ideas you’re working on.
• Review products of interest to your readers—if you write historical fiction, review other historical novels or historical films. If you write about nature, the outdoors, activities like rock-climbing, then write reviews of nature hiking trails, the best kayaking places, or the newest in climbing equipment.
• Share information about your industry or genre—a lot of readers want to be writers, so talk about writing, publishing, and book marketing—be helpful to everyone who asks for help (within reason).
• Offer viewpoints that may be a little controversial.
• Ask your readers for their opinions on what you post. Solicit comments from them. Asking for feedback tells your readers that you want to know what they have to say, and that you’re interested in understanding your customers. Respond to the comments people write. Remember, many people view authors as celebrities. They will be pleased that you took the time to write them back. The more comments you get, the more people will want to leave comments. Don’t worry about negative comments—you can control what comments appear on your site, but a little controversy can also help.
• Ask your readers what topics they would like you to post about. Ask them for ideas for future books, or put up a piece of writing and ask for feedback.
• Link to other sites and exchange links. Find authors who write on similar topics or in similar genres. Interview them, or review each other’s books. Links will help your search engine optimization and you’ll have more links back to your site to attract readers.
• Advertise your blog. Just putting up a blog on your website won’t get people to your blog. Advertise it through your email lists. Be involved in social media sites like Facebook and Twitter where you can promote your blog.
• Avoid trying to sell directly. No one likes a pushy salesperson. Share information and make people curious about your thoughts, opinions, and writing. People like to do business with people they know and like. As they get to know and like you, they’ll become more curious to buy your book.
• Go beyond the written word. Include photographs in your blog to attract people who are more visual. You can also include audio and video to your blog. Take turns playing with or switching up different types of blog posts.
• Automate your blog so everything you post goes to your social networking sites. Ping.fm is one good site that allows you to cross-post.
• Be listed on blog directories so people looking for information or the topics you’re writing about can find you.
• Follow other authors and people in the publishing industry’s blogs and post comments on those blogs—your website will be included so people will follow you back to your website.
• Post on average three or more blogs a week so you always have new content and readers stay interested.

Blogging can be a fun and fulfilling way to promote your books, to have conversations with readers, to try out ideas for future books, and to learn a great deal about how to market your books to attract readers. Ultimately, you won’t know if blogging is effective for you unless you try it.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

When I recently redesigned SellingBooks.com I looked at several plugins and add-ons to manage comments in WordPress, and finally decided on CommentLuv. Not long after that, Andy Bailey released CommentLuv Premium and I couldn’t wait to try it. I liked the free version of the CommentLuv plugin, but the premium version blows it away! I LUV CommentLuv! It makes it easy for me to reward my readers with dofollow links and other goodness, while also getting more Tweets, Facebook Likes and Google +1s for my blog.

Now I want to give YOU the chance to use CommentLuv Premium on your blog for free!

Andy Bailey, CommentLuv developer, recent had a very limited pre-launch. I was one of his top affiliates for that launch, so he has offered me a free copy of CommentLuv Premium to give to one of my readers, and it could be you! The license allows you to use CommentLuv Premium on all of your sites, so if you have 100 WordPress sites, you can install CommentLuv on every one.

What does CommentLuv Premium do?

• Gets you more backlinks to your blog.
• Combines eight useful plugins into one must-have plugin.
• Increases your blog traffic and comments, and builds a community on your blog.
• Encourages readers to share your blog posts on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
• Helps to combat spam comments.
• You can even track your comments on other CommentLuv-enabled blogs.

How you can enter to win the free CommentLuv Premium plugin:

1. First, copy and paste this paragraph into a post on your blog, making sure the links are intact:

There is a hot new WordPress plugin coming soon! Cathy Stucker is giving away a free copy at her book marketing site, SellingBooks. Learn how you can enter and win by visiting Cathy’s CommentLuv Premium giveaway page.

2. Leave a comment below including a link to your post that contains the above paragraph.

That’s all! One lucky reader’s comment/blog post will be chosen at random on November 14, 2011. (The official CommentLuv launch will be November 15, 2011, so you can win it before you can buy it!)

Well, there is one more thing you need to do, even if you do not choose to enter the contest. Go to the CommentLuv site and sign up for Andy’s notification list. Even if you are not yet sure if CommentLuv Premium is right for you, sign up for Andy’s list to get access to free videos and other bonuses (no purchase required) to help you get noticed on the Internet and drive more traffic to your blog. (You can always unsubscribe later, if you wish.)

P.S. Let your readers, fans and followers know about this contest and CommentLuv. The more people who use CommentLuv, the more valuable it is to all of us!

Your “About the Author” or “About Me” page is one of the most important pages on your website, perhaps second only to the page that allows people to buy your book. Why? Because your potential readers want to know you are human and to be reassured that you know what you are writing about. They also want to put a face to your name, so that means using an up close and personal headshot.

Before you rush to put up that “About the Author” page or you go to revamp one you already have, here are some key Do’s and Don’ts for creating your “About the Author” page, including what to include and what to leave out.

Your Bio Content

Your bio needs to accomplish several things and in a small space. Here are key things to include:

• Where You Were Born: Your city, state, or country if you were born outside the United States. This simple fact helps to start building a relationship with people. If a reader is from the Midwest and you were born in Ohio, the reader might feel a connection to you, or the reader may have visited and liked Ohio. That connection makes the world a smaller place. If you were born in Sri Lanka or Germany or Australia, the American reader might find you a little exotic or intriguing and want to know more about you and how you ended up living in Delaware, thereby piquing the reader’s curiosity about you—and your book.
• Your Education: You don’t need to include every school you went to, but simply any universities or programs relative to what your book is about. For example, if you wrote a novel, mentioning that you have an MFA in Creative Writing is important. If you are a novelist, a degree in computer programming may be less relevant, unless maybe you’re writing a science fiction novel about people who get sucked into a video game they are playing, which may reflect that you know something about how computer programs or video games operate.
• Your Experience: As with your education, your experiences might be noted. For example, if you’re writing about health and nutrition, then your experience as an Olympic athlete is definitely relevant. If you’re writing about the Civil War, that you belong to a battle reenactment group is interesting and gives you some expertise for writing battle scenes.
• Previous Books You Have Written: If you haven’t published any other books, no problem, but you could say something like, “Joe has been writing stories since he was eight years old” or “After fifteen years of researching his topic, Mark finally published his book.” If you have written several books, go ahead and list them all. Readers may not know your name, but they may know the title of one of your books, which may make them more willing to take a chance on buying your newest book, or even an old one.
• What You Stand For: Perhaps you want to mention groups or causes you are involved in, preferably not controversial ones, unless relevant to your book. For example, if your book is about teaching sexual education and you’re involved in a Planned Parenthood group, it would be appropriate to mention it. However, if your book is a fantasy novel, Planned Parenthood may be irrelevant, or it might even hurt you if people have different opinions than you on birth control and then don’t want to buy your book. If your book is about education, by all means, mention the teaching association you belong to. Stating that you’re a Republican might make you lose most of the readers who are Democrats, or vice versa, so pick and choose who your audience is and avoid anything that will isolate potential readers.

Tone

It’s more important that you come off as a real person than that you come off as intimidating or overly knowledgeable. Depending on your topic, that you have three cats might help you sell more books than that you have five Ph.D.’s. People want to read about people like themselves, or whom they perceive to be a little smarter, more advanced, or more successful than themselves; they want to feel good about themselves and believe that you have been where they are, but that you have gotten farther than them and maybe can help them to do the same. In short, you want to inspire people. Try to come off as a real person your readers could sit down to chat with, not someone too stuck up to talk with them or who will intimidate them. Write like you talk so the reader can resonate with you. Be human.

The tone you want to convey may also influence whether you title your page an “About the Author” page and write it in third person, or an “About Me” page and write it in first person. Either can be fine, but a first person page that lists a lot of accomplishments may sound like you are bragging, so be careful how you word it. At the same time, you can sound more human and friendly in first person. You may want to write two separate bios, one in each voice, to see which one feels more comfortable to you. Then get some feedback from others to see which one resonates with them the most.

Length

I just gave you a bunch of things to include in your bio, but remember to include it all in a short space. You’re not writing your life story, just enough information to interest the reader. No one wants to read a long biography of you. Aim for about three paragraphs or a page at most, and less than five hundred words. You probably want a bio that will fit on a website page without the viewer having to scroll down much, and you may want to include the same bio on the back page of your book, generally so it fills one page while leaving room for a photo.

Remember that online, people tend to skim, so if you really want them to read your bio, shorter is better. You might also consider breaking it up into bullet points or a timeline, such as for listing all ten of your books or some other key information, so it’s easier to read.

Finally, consider that the media may need just a short blurb about you if they interview you. Keep it short and to the point so they can just copy your bio from your website without their having to do a lot of rewriting. You may also get requests from the media to email them your bio, in which case, you may want to keep a copy of it, maybe even a shorter version, on your computer to have handy when they request it.

Author Photo

It’s imperative you have a good, high resolution, author photo. That doesn’t mean a photo taken with a cell phone that is blurry, dark or small, nor a mug-shot or driver’s license looking photo. And not a photo of you with your spouse, three kids, and two dogs where the viewer has to pick you out from among several people. You want a headshot of yourself that is large enough that it makes the viewer feel like he is making eye contact with you. It doesn’t have to be a fancy studio photograph, and you don’t have to get all dressed up for it since it’s a headshot that will at most only show your shoulders. But you can wear a tie if you like, or a necklace, or whatever clothing you feel will project who you are as an author in relation to the kind of book you have written. You basically want to look like yourself on a daily basis.

Consider also the background of the photo and how it reflects your author image. If you’ve written a business book, you may want to wear the suit and tie and have a plain background. If you’re writing a vacation or travel book, you may want to wear a Hawaiian shirt and have the ocean in the background. If you’ve written a book about dog training, you might be holding a puppy, but if your book is about gardening, trade the puppy for a gardening smock and some greenery in the background. Remember, you’re telling the reader through this photo who you are so the reader can resonate with you—at the same time, you don’t want to disappoint readers when they meet you in person, so make sure it’s a current photo. A photo of you at twenty-five may look nicer than a photo of you at sixty, but if you’re sixty, use a current photo. Stay current by updating your photo at least every few years.

Contact Information

You may have a separate page for contacting you on your website, but it doesn’t hurt to include your contact information on your “About Me” page. Once readers see and resonate with you, they may feel a desire to contact you, so it’s best to have that information on two pages. A lot of authors have contact forms on their pages, which works to decrease spam. Be sure if you are going to give your readers a way to contact you that you respond to their emails, and make sure your contact information (email address or phone number) is always current.

Remember it’s an honor to have someone interested in you and your book enough to want to write to you. Be polite and friendly by responding. Your “About the Author” page can become the stepping stone for building a relationship with your readers, and a simple personal email can be the second step toward a lasting relationship. Not only will you sell more books to the individual reader by letting him or her contact you, but you never know what information or stories readers may have to share with you that will lead to new ideas for future books or speaking engagements.

A Final Note: Does Your Reader Know Who You Are?

By following the advice above, you can create a simple and effective “About Me” page. When you are done, ask yourself and some friends/potential readers:

• Does the page tell my potential readers who I am?
• Can the reader resonate with me?
• What is on the page that makes me human?
• Is there something on this page that will make my potential reader say, “Yes, I want to read this author’s book! This author sounds like someone I can relate to”?

If the answer to all those questions is “Yes,” you’ve created a successful author page. Just remember to update it (information, photo, contact information) as needed so it stays effective. Now, you’re ready to meet your readers online.

Irene Watson is the Managing Editor of Reader Views, where avid readers can find reviews of recently published books as well as read interviews with authors. Her team also provides author publicity and a variety of other services specific to writing and publishing books.

What is a Blog?

A blog is a derivative from the word, weblog. It is just like a website, only it features entries that are listed in reverse chronological order. It needs to be updated on a regular basis, and it can include photos of products.

Blogs are very easy to set up and maintain, much easier than a full service website in fact. They are also inexpensive. Free blog hosting platforms provides you the opportunity to write your passions before a potential large audience of readers. If you are serious about making money, then you would do best to use a self-hosted blog platform.

Free Blog Hosting Sites

Free hosting sites are great for stories and or personal thoughts on life.

Owned by search engine giant, Google, Blogger.com is the most popular blog hosting site. It is free to use, easy to set up and maintain. Blogger also offers several options, making it possible for you to customize your blog according to its intended theme.

Livejournal.com is another free hosting blog platform that is fast becoming widely popular. The great thing about Livejournal is that it offers hundreds of different layouts and multimedia options. If you want to add advanced features to your blog, you can upgrade to a paid membership. LiveJournal even has its own community and internet radio show designed for bloggers and to help bloggers promote their blogs

Other free hosting sites are WordPress.com, Tumblr.com and Blogsome.com. Out of all these free blog hosting platforms, WordPress and LiveJournal offer the greatest variety in blog design layouts and themes. WordPress even offers an all in one SEO package, a feature that is designed to help your blog rank higher in major search engines.

Self-Hosted Blog Platforms

If you’re serious about making money from your blog, or if you want to create a business blog, setting up a self-hosted blog platform would be the best way to go. There is something about that ‘.com’ that gives a blog a professional look and appeal.

With a self-hosted blog, you get to choose your own domain name and you have full control over the creativity and design of your blog. Self-hosted blog platforms are also inexpensive to create and maintain. Some highly reputable self-hosted platforms are Movable Type.com, B2evolution.net and Textpattern.com.

Before you decide to set up a blog, you should browse through different blog platforms and choose the platform that best suits your needs.

Deanna Proach is a guest blogger for SEO Doctor, an SEO Consultant based in the UK.

With just a little initial effort, every post on your blog can travel to multiple places where your readers congregate, leaving you more time to write.  The secret to this is to harness your RSS feed to syndicate your blog.  RSS stands for different things depending on who you ask, but I remember it as Really Simple Syndication.

That orange button with the white wavy lines on it you see on most blogs is the RSS feed.  You click it and are able to sign up to receive the blog posts in a reader, or by email, or both, depending on the way it is configured.  You can essentially “sign-up” several places to receive and display your blog posts so they reach more people than your blog alone will.

The top five sites for authors to interact with fans seem, from requests for help I receive, to be the author pages on GoodReads.com and Amazon.com, the Kindle blog publishing program, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you have a book with an ISBN number on the cover (usually the back cover), you are eligible to request an author page from GoodReads.com.  The people there are avid readers who are looking for new books to read.  They enjoy interacting with their favorite authors and reading excerpts, blog posts, and other things posted there by them.  You can also give away copies of your book through GoodReads.com and most of the time, the winners will post a review when they are finished reading the book.

Amazon.com also allows authors who have a book that is available through them to have an author’s page.  The advantage of this is that most people are looking to buy something to read when they encounter your page.  The content you leave there can further prime them to buy your book.

Many people have put their backlist on Kindle and other eReaders.  It is also possible to put your blog onto Kindle.  Readers pay a nominal subscription fee each month to get every post as you write it.  Since they are using their Kindle to read your words, they may become interested enough to purchase your eBooks as well.

Establishing a fan page on Facebook has become more important than ever as studies show many young adults and twenty somethings use it to the exclusion of other sites.  It can, however, seem like a huge time sink to some of us.  You can feed your blog postings onto the wall of your fan page and interact with your fans over the comments to what you have written.  Having the blog feed there also keeps your page from looking abandoned.

Finally, Twitter is used to communicate and market by an ever increasing crowd.  In 140 characters or less, you can put out the title and a teaser for each blog post to draw people to your website.  There, they can read the entire post and hopefully be exposed to your entire catalog of books.

To feed your blog to Facebook and Twitter, it is easiest to use a program such as Twitterfeed.com.  This automatically picks up the information and posts it for you.  You can have it check as often as every 30 minutes for new posts and transfer them where you direct.

Technology has made the author’s job at once easier and harder.  Use your RSS feed to expand your platform while leaving you time to write.

Promise yourself that you’ll add bloggers to the list of people who you will contact for publicity.

I know, I know. Some of you don’t care about bloggers or what they write. You care about ront-page coverage in your local daily newspaper. Or an appearance on a big show like “Good Morning America.”

That media coverage is great if you can get it. But not everybody who will want to know about your book, product, service, cause or issue reads newspapers, and circulation within the entire newspaper industry continues to erode year after year. As for that TV talk show, even if you get your 15 minutes of fame on “Oprah,” the publicity is here today and gone tomorrow.

Bloggers, on the other hand, are in a position to rapidly spread the word about you. And what they say will remain online for months and even years, waiting to be found by people who are searching for information on a topic that’s related to your book.

Why blogs are so powerful for publicity

Here are the reasons why pitching to influential bloggers can bring you far more publicity than traditional media:

* Bloggers usually write about niche topics. So if you’re sponsoring an event for, say, women accountants, you can pitch it to bloggers who blog about accounting and those who blog about women in the workplace. Targeting your message like a laser saves you a lot of time.

* Unlike websites, blogs are updated frequently. For that reason, the search engines love blogs and often give them a high position in the list of items you see when you search on a particular topic. This is called the organic search list.

* Four out of 10 journalists say they read blogs when looking for story ideas or researching their articles. In fact, many journalists are starting their own blogs.

* Bloggers, unlike journalists, frequently link to each other’s postings. So if one influential blogger writes about your product, other bloggers might link to it, thus creating viral publicity and hitting audiences you never knew existed.

Where to start your blog research

When you’re ready to publicize your book, you can start researching bloggers by using Technorati, a search engine for blogs. Just type a topic into the search box, hit Enter, and Technorati will return to you a list of blogs that include information about that topic.

Or, you can simply use a search engine like Google and search for “garden blogs” or “accounting blogs” or whatever the topic happens to be.

Once you’ve found a blog that looks like a good candidate for your pitch, spend some time reading it so you get a good feel for the kinds of content the blogger writes about. Pay particular attention to whether the blogger refers to people who have emailed them to let them know about something. That’s a good indication the blogger is open to receiving a pitch.

One of the very best ways to get a blogger’s attention before you pitch is to post a comment about a topic they discuss at their blog. I’ll sometimes post two or three comments within a week or two at a particular blog before pitching that blogger with my idea. Why? Because I want the blogger to recognize me when I pitch.

I have my own blog, and I pay close attention to everyone who posts comments there. It shows me they’re willing to become involved in the conversation, not just contact me when they want something.

What not to say to bloggers

It’s best not to pitch information about your product or service as part of a comment or it will look too self-promotional. It’s better to email the blogger, catch their attention and hope they write about the event.

Don’t say things like “It would be nice if you mentioned this in your blog” or “Perhaps you might want to blog about this.” Just tell them about whatever you want them to know, and let them decide if they want to include it as a blog item.

During a teleseminar I conducted with Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff (aka The Blog Squad), we gave participants a long list of mistakes to avoid when pitching. You can learn more about it from the recording called “How to Pitch the Best Bloggers and Create a Publicity Explosion.”

Now, you’re ready to start contacting bloggers. Just remember that the more narrowly you focus, the better the results. Pitch only bloggers whose audiences would be interested in your event.

It’s time to start creating some great viral publicity.

Joan Stewart publishes the free ezine “The Publicity Hound’s Tips of the Week,” which gives you valuable tips on how to generate thousands of dollars in free publicity. Subscribe at http://www.PublicityHound.com

Authors, don’t think about using bloggers to promote your book. Think about building long term relationships with bloggers to help sell a lifetime of books.  Here are the steps that work well for us:

• Find them on Twitter first – use Twitter search to find bloggers that are tweeting and blogging about topics in your genre. Start RT’ing their tweets and give them a bit of sass. Most bloggers enjoy a snarky sense of humor so find ones with whom you can build rapport.
• Don’t just focus on traffic – many bloggers have huge influence with their readers despite lower traffic numbers.  Read the comments on the blog to see how engaged the blogger is with their readers, and how many readers are commenting on a regular basis.
• RSS feed the blogs you are interested in – this will give you an easy way to keep up with what they’re blogging about.
• Promote the blog on your own social media accounts – we do a ton of PR for bloggers by tweeting their posts, mentioning their posts in our own blog, suggesting them to traditional media…the blog world is the most collaborative environment I’ve seen. Scratch their back and they will usually scratch yours.
• Don’t aim too high – try to find bloggers on the up and up, ones that have a fair amount of readers but aren’t overwhelmed by their fans. You can try for months to get a mention in Copyblogger and never get anywhere. Getting 15 mentions in lower traffic blogs with good influence may be just as good.
• Install the Alexa toolbar – Alexa will tell you not only the traffic stats, but give you some incredible demographics on the blogs’ readers as well. Find a blogger on Twitter that seems to match your demo, and then check them out on Alexa. This will also tell you whether the blog is on the rise or if the blogger is losing interest and readership/traffic is waning.
• Ask the blogger if you can pitch them and do it EARLY – don’t pitch bloggers after you’ve pitched all the traditional media, it’s offensive. And give the bloggers galleys  if you can.

If you’re a new author, bloggers might be the most important media for your campaign. They may be the ones that flag you to the traditional media as well. Treat bloggers with as much respect as you do an editor from the New York Times. They can have tremendous influence with readers, agents, media and bookstores.

Bonnie Harris is the founder of Wax Marketing, an integrated marketing and public relations firm. Read her blog here and follow her on Twitter for more tips on promoting books, products and services in the new media world.

First, let’s address why commenting on posts is a great way to build you up as an author-expert and drive traffic back to your website:

1. The blogger reads every comment. If you repeatedly show your support and provide targeted and insightful responses, the blogger will turn to you (instead of the Internet) the next time they need a guest post or an expert to interview.
2. Blog followers read the comments. Popular blogs can have comment sections that go on for days. If other followers see you as a resource, they will seek you out.
3. Other media professionals follow blogs too. If they like your comments, they may also book you as an expert for interviews and guest articles.

You would think that commenting would be easy, but so many people do comments all wrong. The comment section is not an opportunity to advertise. Promoting your website or book in the comments section (when not asked to) makes you as tactful as the drunk girl trying to steal the groom from the bride at their wedding. To help you avoid a similarly public and lasting fiasco, here are some tips on how to comment successfully and appropriately:

1. Provide value and substance: Take the post a step further by suggesting another point of view, an additional resource, or in some way contributing valuable insight to the conversation created by the post.
2. Start with praise: Remember, you’re on someone else’s turf. Start by saying that you liked the post. Point to a specific line or phrase you liked (this shows you really read it). It only takes a little to grease the wheels. Then you can add your insightful response.
3. Keep promo out: Most comment feeds let you insert a hyperlink in your name that leads back to your website or blog. If your response is helpful and insightful, people will click on that link to learn more about you. Putting a website in your post makes you look self-serving, which no one finds attractive.
4. Focus on blogs on your topic: If you are trying to build yourself up as an author-expert in business, commenting on gardening won’t help build your platform. As in all your marketing efforts, stay focused.
5. Be a serial commenter: Pick a few blogs to follow and comment on them consistently (only when you have value to add, of course). This will help you build a rapport with the blogger and his or her audience. Avoid one-shot commenting on a large number of posts. Also, focusing on just a few blogs is more manageable time-wise.

The blogosphere is a powerful and supportive community. If you consistently contribute to and support the success of other bloggers, they will take notice and find ways to return the favor. As always, remember to pay it forward and engage the readers who share insightful comments on your blog.

Shennandoah Diaz is the Business Development Assistant at Greenleaf Book Group, a publisher and distributor supporting independent authors and small presses. Diaz develops educational materials for authors in addition to managing Greenleaf’s social media, writing case studies and white papers on the publishing industry, and coordinating Austin Publishing University.