Sep 05 2007
I’m A Follower
On Monday, Snoskred posted about Do Follow. I had been wondering about that, about which is better, because everyone who has an opinion on it thinks that their way is the best way. Basically, Do Follow/No Follow is about linky love and spam. Those who are Do Follow code their blogs so that when people leave comments, the search engine 8-legged things that go out and find links will find them. Those that are No Follow code so that the links aren’t findable (is that a word?) and they won’t get spam. I coded mine to be Do Follow long before I really knew what it was.
For those people who are really obsessed about their search engine ranking and how they rank on various social networking sites, they’ll want to be Do Follow. Snoskred’s friend Sephy has a post about how to do this. On the other hand, those who are so paranoid about spam that even with comment moderation and the silly word verification thing, they want to do everything possible to prevent even one iota of spam getting through to their comments. There are ways to do that too. If you’re on Blogger, don’t do anything, since your code is No Follow by default. The spambots can be overcome with simple comment moderation. I moderate, but I don’t do the word verification thingy. I hate it myself, so I don’t subject people to having to drink to see that straight enough to fill it in. But I moderate only because I want to know what’s going on my blog before everyone else does. Hey, it’s my blog and I can moderate it if I wanna.
Now, there’s more to this Do Follow/No Follow thing. Whenever someone new visits my blog, I like to visit theirs (if they leave me the means to) and see who they are. I’ve picked up many new blogging friends this way. It also give me a chance to reply in the most appropriate manner. Which brings me to…
You comment, I reply. As you may have noticed, I have been doing my best to reply to everyone who leaves a comment on my blog. The best way for me to do that is to comment on my own blog, so it becomes like a conversation. I don’t do it so much to increase my traffic or anything like that. I just think it’s a really nice thing to do. Someone is talking to me. I should at least acknowledge their contact, right?
The one thing that I’m kinda bad about is commenting on other people’s blogs. I don’t feel obligated to comment to every post every one in my feed writes. That’s a fast track to a full-time, very unproductive job - kind of like forwarding all that “forward this for good luck” crap I get in my inbox. I do try to comment at least every few posts, to let you know I’m still reading. When someone new comments on my blog, and I visit their blog, I don’t necessarily comment unless their blog and its content resonates enough with me to want to. Simple as that.
I enjoy blogging. I don’t decide whether or not to comment on someone’s blog based on their Do Follow/No Follow/iReply status. I only comment when I have something to say, simple as that. Also, at this point I’m not too concerned with rankings. I mean, if someone refuses to read my blog because I don’t have a Technorati rating star level 74 or something silly like that, well, I don’t need ‘em. But I do want to be a good blogger, that’s something that’s going to make me happy about my blog, so that’s what I’m gonna do.
Read more about the Do Follow movement here.
Read more about the iReply movement here.
Now, Snoskred, what do you know about the whole co.mments thing? Is it extra work to the point that I’m better off just trying to remember where I commented to see if people reply, or is it a Google Reader-like miracle?
I’m just off out the door but I wanted to say before I went, it is a miracle.
I’ll be back with more on this..
Snoskred
http://www.snoskred.org
Interesting post. I’m afraid I’m going to have to turn on word verification or moderate, because I’m getting a fair amount of spam these days. I suppose I should also change to Do Follow if I can figure out how…
Snoskred - looking forward to your thoughts on it.
Diesel - either moderation or word verification should help. Read Sephy’s post on how to be a follower and ask someone who knows a bit more to check out your page source.
Thanks for supporting iReply!
` Spam is evil!!
` What’s weird is when people complain they can’t comment because they don’t have a blogger account and they think that’s the only way to comment, so finally one day they make a blogger account just to make one comment on your blog!
` Oh, and because you do the following the commenter thing, you might want to know I’m also a nutjob.
Mark - I’ve been enjoying my blog just that much more since I started making an effort to reply to comments
s e e quine - Yes, spam is evil, if highly entertaining at times. And, uh, thanks for visiting.
Hi Kirsten… just a few comments.
“nofollow” is the default in Wordpress and Blogger templates. There are Wordpress plugins that will strip it out for you but it is just as easy to do it manually.
In Blogger all you have to do is search and destroy all inferences of it from your template. Easy-peesy.
All it basically means is the “nofollow” attribute tells Google to not include the link in its pagerank algorithm. Hence, no linky love is attributed to that link.
I wholeheartedly encourage you to follow (no pun intended) the dofollow crowd and let the love begin.
Co.mments are very convenient for following your conversations on other blogs without having to actually go visit them to see if there is a reply.
If you comment a lot on other blogs it can be a real time saver. But if you don’t then it’s probably not for you.
Responding to commenters on your blog helps foster goodwill and a community spirit that will encourage repeat visitors (and more comments :).
Have I missed anything? Oh yeah, I always look forward to your comments @ Blog Bloke.
Cheers!
…BB
Bloke - thanks for the input on the how-to. As for co.mments, I’m considering it. So far their front page hasn’t drawn me in to using it, and while I understand the concept, I don’t want to have to add an extra step or otherwise make things harder than they already are.
I try to remember to reply to comments on my blog, but sometimes a few fall through the cracks and I ended up feeling bad. lol
And you’re right about commenting on every blog. I have shrunk my blogroll considerably in recent months because I was simply having a hard time keeping up with everyone. I also hadn’t heard from people in awhile and a few others kind of dropped off the face of the earth. Oh well… such is bloggery.
Allie, it seems that some bloggers have the life span of a fruit fly. Actually, by all the abandoned blogs I come across, it’s more than some. Blogging is a trend, but for me and many of my blogging friends, it’s a hobby, a business, a way of life.
Darn it, I forgot to come back to this one.. sorry! But here I am now.
Co.mments is basically a simple way to track comments on any blog - be it wordpress, blogger, or any other kind of blog.
When you find something you want to track, you have two options. Copy the URL into co.mments and click track, or you can use a “bookmarklet” which is really simple to set up, and then all you have to do is click on it when you want to track a conversation. You can also share your tracked conversations with others and put it into an RSS feed. It is all really simple to use and a godsend for me who often wants to keep an eye on places I have commented at.
It is simple to sign up and try it, so that might be the best idea.
Cheers!
Snoskred
Snoskred - thanks for coming back with the info! RSS feeds sound perfect. I’m loving Google Reader and the fact that the info comes to me, so I might just do this!