Artists: Are you encouraging comments on your blog?

Tommy Thompson left a nice mention of me and ArtBizSuccess.com on his Painting Under the Sun blog, but I couldn't comment to say thanks (he's only allowing Blogger comments). And there was no way to email him from his blog. So, I just want to say publicly, thanks, Tommy!

I post my experience here as a lesson to others. Many of you don't know that your blog settings aren't allowing everyone to comment. Error! Error! Having more comments makes your blog "stickier" and more connected to everyone else on the Web. That makes you more attractive to search engines.

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19 thoughts on “Artists: Are you encouraging comments on your blog?”

  1. This is an issue that requires something of a balancing act. A high number of comments posted on blogs are simply spam. “Splogging” has become a way of getting higher Google rankings for very undesirable sites by placing junk messages on blogs with unrestricted comment settings. Unless a blogger is diligently monitoring comments (and that means watching all the old blog postings that are long-forgotten) it might be wise to utilize some of comment restriction options blog software provides. It’s interesting to note that only 30% of the millions of blog postings added every day are in English. I too often lose sight of the fact that the US is just a small portion of the Internet universe.

  2. Alyson B. Stanfield

    I receive a lot of comments on this blog, but, strangely, none of what I consider to be spam. Most of my spam comes in the form of trackbacks, which I delete immediately. And, strangely, they seem to come in “waves.”

  3. This month the traffic on my blog has alsmot doubled (from 6000 unique visitors to over 10,000 so far). The first few days of the month I could track it to links to my blog and the increase was probably a true increase in readership. But the past 2 weeks I’ve run into problem – serious spam. I’ve always gotten a few a day but in the past 15 days akismet has stopped over 1000 spam comments. Another 20-30 have slipped by but were caught by other anti-spam mechanisms in wordpress. Only 2 real spam comments made it through and were posted (and so had to be deleted). Sadly those on blogger and typepad don’t have such protection and as Pat said something has to be done to stop the spam because with numbers like I’m getting there is no way to manually keep up.

  4. Forgot to mention the most annoying thing about this spam. It means my statistics are pretty much useless at this point as much of the traffic isn’t real readers. Very frustrating.

  5. My concern was that no one would comment at all!!!! I’ll give it try and see what happens (my theme for this year). Thank you for the great information Lisa, Pat, and Alyson. I’ve learned so much in just this last month from you all.

  6. Alyson B. Stanfield

    I guess TypePad is doing a good job with finding and deleting spam comments because I really don’t get any. Mostly the trackbacks and even then, as I said, they come in waves. Sometimes I don’t get any for a long time.

  7. I think there is maybe a misunderstanding here. In reality, what you need to do to comment on a moderated Blogger blog which only accepts registered member comments (ie you need to register – you don’t need to have a Blogger blog) is very little different than for other blogging software. You say who you are, what your e-mail is and basically identify yourself through a process of registration. I have to go through the same process all the time when commenting on the blogs of other people who don’t use Blogger. Blogger offers a great deal of protection * no comment on a Blogger blog actually counts in any way for browser ranking purposes. I forget what the term is but I think it means all links are automatically coded ‘no follow’ or some such – which basically means any links posted don’t count. * if you limit them to people registered with Blogger and use the letter recognition thing as well it stops virtually all spam from getting through * finally, if you moderate your comments that stops the rest. My blog gets lots of comments on old posts and I wouldn’t dream of turning off my moderation for that reason. Plus I get to send any spamming comments to Google spam just for good measure! Having said all that, if people think they need a Blogger blog to comment then that is obviously of concern – which is why I tend to respond like this every time I see this point being raised.

  8. Alyson B. Stanfield

    Katherine, my experience is that unless someone has turned on some ‘switch’ to allow non-Blogger comments, I cannot comment on their blog. There is no place to allow for non-Blogger comments. However, if they have turned on the ‘switch,’ it’s easy to comment. I don’t mind being moderated. But there have been a number of occasions when people don’t even know they have that option and that non-Blogger bloggers are disallowed from commenting.

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  15. I love the letter recognition option! I always wondered what point it had until I started my Blog. Instantly I realized expecting individuals to go through the tedious task will save me a lot of comment space in the long run. Now I’m just working on getting my name out there to generate an interest in my Blog. The curse of there being so many to choose from makes the challenge of getting yours to stick out all the more difficult. Not that I’m not up for the task, of course.

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  18. Hi Alyson. I am a relatively new blogger and have no idea on how to get ANY traffic. In a way, it’s okay for now because I am still trying to find a voice and nuances of my blog change constantly. One or two friends say that left comments, but I can’t find them. Not giving up yet.

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Your Artist Mailing List: Rethinking + Assessing

Get a transcript of episode 182 of The Art Biz (Rethinking Mailing Lists for Artists) followed by a 3-page worksheet to evaluate the overall health and usage of the 3 types of artist lists.

Where can we send it? 

To ensure delivery, please triple check your email address.

You’ll also receive my regular news for your art business.

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