How to use Google Reader to effectively track your Comment Marketing | How to be an Original

Here's a tool to track your comments (on blogs at least - and probably forums which have RSS feeds). This then makes comment marketing subject to metrics - particularly as you can trace where people come to your opt-in pages from through your web logs. Google Reader just simplifies your tracking cross-linked comments and being able to join in the conversation more easily.

How to use Google Reader to effectively track your Comment Marketing | How to be an Original: "

The practice of Comment Marketing
One of the items of marketing is Comment Marketing. Comment Marketing is the practice of bloggers leaving comments on posts of other blogs that add to the discussion of that post. Real comments that preferably add to the discussion. This is a win-win practice, where the blogger, the readers and you can win (so more of a win-win-win even). The blogger wins because he gets lively discussions in the comments section. Comments are an essential part of blogging, and a while back I read somewhere that “half the fun is in the comments”. The readers win because they are involved in a discussion on a topic that interests them, and if appropriate they are provided with further reading somewhere else (your blog). And finally you as a blogger win because you get some targeted traffic. To make comment marketing work best you need to follow the next steps:

• Leave a real comment that adds to the discussion of a post
• Follow-up on the comments a day or two days later if necessary
• Become a regular commenter on that blog

Google Reader as a tracking tool
Google Reader provides an excellent way to track the articles you have commented on. All of the blogs I comment on are in my Reader, and all the articles I commented on get a star. This has several benefits:

• Articles commented on per blog
  I can see per blog how many articles I have commented on and the timeline of my comments. If I click on the list view of a blog, I can see at a glance how many articles I have commented on. If I look at the dates I can also tell the time interval I have commented. Commenting on all articles is not recommended You’re not stalking the blogger now are you?
• Articles commented on per day
  I can see how many comments I have left on all the blogs per day. If I select the starred items overview, the list view shows the dates the stars have been assigned. So if you do this consistently, you can tell how many articles you have commented on per day.
• Revisit articles commented on recently
  I can easily revisit blogs I have commented on. Using the starred items view, I can easily find all articles I have commented on in the last two days and revisit them to check-up on the discussion. Most blogs offer you an option to get new comments on an article emailed to you, but that can amount in vast numbers of email. I prefer to use Google Reader to revisit.

Adopting this is an easy routine, that will help you to get the most out of your comment marketing. But besides the marketing part, commenting is also a lot of fun, provides great opportunities to learn something and shows appreciation for the blogger who wrote the post. Commenting is good practice!

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