Comment Marketing

That’s the title of a session I got to attend at RE Bar Camp – Phoenix last week. Tyler Hurst lead the discussion and talked about this interesting marketing method I had not previously heard of – Comment Marketing. The premise is simple – leave comments on blogs to drive traffic to your website. However, there are a few steps you should know in order to be as effective as possible. Let’s talk about leaving a comment, having your picture/logo display next to your comment, and making it easy to find articles about subjects you are interested in.

This image shows the comment field for a typical blog. You have the opportunity to leave your name, email, website, and of course – the comment. Be sure to fill in all these fields. One piece of advice – use your name. Don’t type in “Phoenix Real Estate” or “Scottsdale REALTOR®”. It comes across as spammy and reduces the likelihood of the publisher allowing your comment to be displayed. In the event you don’t have a website, but you still want to leave comments – I recommend using an online profile from linkedin, twitter, or facebook. I’ve also seen agents sign up for the free Diverse Solutions website and use the unique URL that comes with it. And now to the actual comment. You must contribute to the conversation. Prove that you actually read (at least some of) the article. Agree or disagree with points made, share a true life story, converse with the other people leaving comments. Don’t simply say – Good post – on every article you come across.

How do you get your picture to show up next to your comments? By signing up for a globally recognized avatar – aka Gravatar. All this takes is an email address and an image. Very simple and free. Once you get signed up, your picture will start to display next to your comments automagically.

Tyler mentioned that he uses google alerts/reader to monitor activity on the web about specific subjects. It’s the only way to go so you’re not searching the internets aimlessly for content about your subject. Google alerts are free to set up and they give you an RSS feed (it’s just a link) to copy and paste into google reader (also free). Get in the habit of checking google reader and all the articles google finds for the designated terms will be displayed in one place. Some examples of google alerts for a Phoenix REALTOR® might be Phoenix, “Phoenix Real Estate”, “Arizona Real Estate”, “Phoenix Real Estate Market”, “Real Estate News”. Make sure you use the quotation marks for terms otherwise it will bring results for each individual word.

Now get out there and leave some comments! Just think, if you leave 10 comments a week after a year of doing this there will be 500 links pointing back to your site.