THERE ARE NO MORE EXCUSES FOR NOT COMMENTING

Do you ever realize that you seem to get not many comments for your posts most of the time? What are the reasons people are not commenting? Is it because of plain laziness to blog hop and make a comment or is it because there are no benefits at all for the blog hoppers to gain?

After weeks for researching and commenting in foreign blogs, I came across some interesting findings which I think it will be a waste if I do not share them with my readers. Everyone deserved the right to improve their page rank as well as getting better traffics and backlinks for their sites. Try checking out Dave Lucas's site on increasing blog traffics. Some of you might not even know how to do this without proper guidance. Since I am a Blogger user, I am going to share with you the findings.

Most of the time, you will just use the pre-designed templates provided by Blogger. That is the easiest way out as not many people have the knowledge and experience to come out with a good design. On top of that, there is the HTML language barrier. What you do not know is that all the templates come with a “nofollow attribute”. This is to discourage comment spam. By doing this, you are stopping the search spiders to follow the link and thus stopping the sharing of your “Google Juice” with your fellow bloggers.

What can you do to attract your readers to comment? You share your link juice with them, once they comment in your post. What is the EXTRA BENEFIT that you can give to your readers as a token of appreciation? You give them backlinks. Here are the simple 3 steps that may help you:

Firstly, to discourage comment spam, you need to set the comment moderation in your Blogger account. After logging in your Dashboard, go to CUSTOMIZE, SETTINGS, COMMENT, ENABLE COMMENT MODERATION, YES. Save your template after you are done.

Secondly, you have to do some minor alteration to your HTML in Blogger. Before doing that, save a backup by clicking on DOWNLOAD FULL TEMPLATE. Then, go to CUSTOMIZE, EDIT HTML, tick the EXPAND WIDGET TEMPLATES, search for the following codes:

< dl id='comments-block'>
< b:loop values='data:post.comments'var='comment'>
< dt class='comment-author'expr:id='"comment-" + data:comment.id'>
< a expr:name='"comment-" +data:comment.id'/>
< b:if cond='data:comment.authorUrl'>
< a expr:href='data:comment.authorUrl' rel='nofollow'> < data:comment.author/> < /a>
< b:else/>
< data:comment.author/>
< /b:if>
< data:commentPostedByMsg/>
< /dt>

REMOVE the codes in RED. Save the template.

Lastly, CHOOSE a nice COLOUR WIDGET which is suitable for your blog template from Randy Clay Design to be added prominently to your side bar. This is to ensure that whoever sees this logo will be aware that they will gain an additional backlink from you by commenting. Do encourage your fellow bloggers to do this as this is a WIN-WIN situation for both parties.

For those who are using Wordpress, you can visit this site to gather more information. As for Moveable Type users, try this site.

HOW YOU COMMENT WILL SHOW WHO YOU ARE

There is actually no right or wrong answers to my previous post on Picture to Ponder: Dog vs Beggar. Different people think differently and react differently to a situation or a problem. The post was to test on the maturity, thinking power, level of understanding and personality of a person.

Through the simple pictorial post and through many other articles that I have posted earlier, I have found out that there are many types of people in the blogosphere. Basically, they can be broken down into different categories.

Extraverts: They tend to be naturally active people and full with expressions. They are very sociable and are interested in many things outside of themselves.

Introverts: These are the opposite of extraverts, which makes them more reserved and vary about the world outside them. They have in depth knowledge and focused well in everything they perform. They are a group of low profile people.

COMMANDOS: I talk, you listen. You retaliate, I kill you. These are the group of people who has influences over their followers due to their loud voices and authority to terminate whoever that goes against them. Most people would not step on their tails in order to survive for a longer period of time in the blogosphere.

FOLLOWERS: These people are not decision makers. They tend to follow what others say and do without having their own stand or mind in evaluating any situations or problems. Their actions will prolong their survival in the blogosphere.

Judgers: They are a bunch of structured and organized group of people. Judgers are very productive in decision making and settle things or situation within the quickest possible time.

Perceivers: They are good learners in gaining as much experiences and knowledge as they could. Perceivers are a group of flexible and adaptive people. They always keep their options open to learn up more things. In short, they are always curious about just anything within or outside the blogosphere.

LOVERS: They practically love everything that they see through their eyes. Lovers are people who are filled with love, passion and compassion. They treat everything that either has senses or move about as living things. They are environmentalists who love to see things as they should be.

KILLERS: They elicit chills and horror in the lives of others. They take cruelty and brutality as part and parcel of their lives. They are very temperamental and have unpredictable mood swings.

Thinkers: They see, they think, they write. Thinkers are analytical people who make decisions based on sensibility and logical points. They will comment based on logical reasoning.

Feelers: This sensitive and empathetic group of people believes in choices and personal values. They are the “make peace, no war” people who are constantly in search of harmony amongst bloggers. They tend to sit on the fence in any disputes.

Conscientious: They set targets in their life and aim to be the best in their own field. They are a bunch of self discipline, hardworking people who will eventually become professional bloggers.

Neurotics: This group of people tends to have emotional instability. Neurotics are always not satisfied about their lives or people surrounding them. Anger, anxiety and depression are their daily dose of expressions.

Sensors: They are practical and literal people. They apply their past experiences and common sense to face the realities of the world surrounding them in their comments.

ARTISEs: They belong to an imaginative and creative group of people. They will foster any relationships in order to make names for themselves.

ASSHOLES: They are people who like to apply the concept of “what they see is what they get and how it is supposed to be”. They like to judge a book by its cover without studying in depth the actual contents. These are the people who like to assume things and situations in their lives.

KIASIS: They are people who have problems in their lives but tend to pretend as if nothing has ever happened. They try to avoid the actual situation or problem and come out with weird excuses rather than facing the situation or problem directly.

KIASUS: They are wanderers with an intention. They like to spy on others’ successful achievements to ensure that they do not lose out to them. They usually do not leave any comments or set hyperlink to the visited blogs.

COPYCATS: This group has the habit of copying other people’s original articles and post as their own. They are most hated by all bloggers.

These are the few categories of people I have encountered since started blogging not long ago. Do you have any other examples which you would like to share? Please do leave a comment here.

Disclaimer: The article was written solely based on the observation of the author. No part or parts of it is targeted at any individual or groups in the blogosphere.