We all read other people’s blogs. And often the case we’re advised to leave our digital footprints in ‘comments’. Hoping by doing so, while gaining some link juice (from Do-Follow blogs), the author or visitors will be kind enough to, maybe, return the favor? That’s the general idea of commenting as one of the traffic-magnet and relationship-building strategies, is it not?

I am NOT someone with the highest ability of commenting, but just how serious we should take blog comments? I know there is a need to be succinct so we could have links spread on 100 new blogs daily! However, what if all the efforts went down the drain just because we didn’t  apply QC in our commenting?

There should be an awakening on …

Treating Commenting as Micro-blogging (Quality over Quantity)

Even I, made the exact same mistakes! Came across a perfect post that I have nothing else to add but to compliment on the effort. Then it makes me realize, “Gosh, I’m doing the ‘You’re great’ type of commenting!” Then I’m in dilemma – shall I comment at all? Does the author bother to check out who am I?  Of course you can, but you may need to do it differently. We’ll be discussing about that shortly. But first:

What type of posts attract comments?

Ask yourself, what do you like to read best? Here are just some that probably have crossed your mind:

• Informative & thought provoking.

• State out a problem, providing solutions, asking for more opinions and added ideas.

• An inspirational story that makes people go teary eyes, strike the emotional cords.

• An honest confession / experience that teaches a lesson.

• List post that’s one of a kind – resourceful, entertaining or different.

• Self made comic, poetry, vodcast – there’s a risk for putting yourself out there, but surely there will be tons of feedback on it. Be prepared as some may not ‘enjoy’ it as much.

• Tool-type reviews – How cool/ effective is the tool? Sometimes it requires more than just a brief content to evoke comments. Otherwise people will be more into ‘great review, I’ll consider using it’. Don’t blame them for doing so. They may read through them just not in need of using it for the time being.

• Totally Out Of The Box!

My Personal Favorites:

Informative + personalized postings = while absorbing the useful information I could learn a bit more about the author as well — personality, creativity, his/her art of blogging… It matches my goal in learning while building a relationship with the author through commenting.

What type of comments that least likable by authors?

a) Covering 80% of the already limited sentences with same-meaning vocabs — ‘great, love, good’ or ‘bad, sucked, hate’.

“This is great. Love your blog. Good job!”
“This sucks! Dislike the idea and really bad!”

— Kindly prove your point a little bit more? Otherwise..

b) Not speaking straight to the point, left the author hanging with ‘HUH?’

“Thanks for sharing 8 great ways to drive in traffic. Can you explain how to get more traffic to my blog?”

— Do you mind to read the post beforehand? Or do you need particular elaboration? Try to be clear.

c) Translated comments from software with no further modification.

“I really like you to write the article..”

— Some direct translation might sound unnatural. Modification is needed otherwise the author may think you’re a bot.

d) Too extreme with self-centered opinions, with disrespectful tone.

“That’s stupid. No way that would work! I have a much better solution for this problem on my post ‘ABC’ (with link). I explained it more thoroughly on how to deal with problem XYZ with cool examples. So you guys do head over to my site and catch the real deal!”

— Seriously? Kindly be respectful and more specific instead of just self-promoting for people to visit your site.

e) Repeated ideas without strengthening your point.

“I like your point A. I also use point A to deal with Z problem. A is really a good way. We shall all apply A.”

“Others have given good ideas. I have nothing else to add.”

— Alright, A is good, but how did it really help you? Kindly elaborate on that. Nothing else to add? You gotta do much better than that to get approved.

How To Comment and Leave an Impression?

1. Be personal with your comment. Share you opinions/insights as you are microblogging.
2. If disagreeing, kindly be respectful and provide advises to assist author in strengthening the point. – you come to build relationship not to ruin one.
3. Needless to be over-used with vocabs, make it plain and understandable.
4. If ‘Me Too’, type anything but the two words.
5. State your interest/gratitude for the provoking story as it helps you in what ways.
6. Request for explanations for your doubts, respectfully.
7. Can you be humorous and unexpectedly entertaining? Even a ‘Me too’ comment attracts with a simple twist.

What If the post is too perfect and I have nothing else to add??!!

Bookmark the page, tweet it or stumble it! An action speaks a thousand words. Whether you meant it genuinely or to ‘bribe’ the author, doesn’t matter as you’re doing a good favor. A little act of kindness is always a beautiful thing to do, why not? It’s just a simple click away nowadays.

Should I notify the author? It’s up to you. I don’t see the harm in doing so but in reasonable frequency. Don’t ‘hard sell’ your effort and do expect nothing in return.

Commenting is a type of social networking

Drop the author a note at the social media sites, complimenting him/her for the great work. It’s much better than just a ‘I love your post’ comment — such visibility may not be in much help since no constructive comments are given. Or you can try Add/Follow the blog author in social media sites. Be initiative.

As of the authors,
Obviously, we still need to provide quality content or else, show people some personalities. Sometimes don’t just blame the commenter as maybe we need to improve our content firstly.

Here are some links that may help you in proper managing your comments and encourage feedback:

30+ Plugins for WordPress Comments
WordPress : Combating Comment Spam
WordPress Plugins for Comments

I don’t plan to use all of them for now, but plugins like Akismet, CommentLuv, Do-Follow, Recent Comments, Subscribe to Comments are the ones activated in my blog.

It’s Your Turn..

Do share you opinions on how to manage your blog comments. What are you likes/dislikes and how us, as visitors could improve our commenting skills over time? Love to hear from you.

First off, I’m officially 1-year older last week, thank you.

I was extremely occupied recently due to some description-writing tasks. The 24/7 working condition was hectic, but the experience gained was priceless. Thank God the work finished the night before my birthday! Yay!!

It’s almost a month since the WordPress migration from Blogger. Today I officially announce WCHINGYA.COM is now a Do-Follow blog! Thanks to my dear friend, Christie’s wonderful post, I decided to join in the force of link love! This means, whenever you leave a comment with your blog link, you will entitle link juice from my blog. Why not? Spreading a little link love for visitors while encouraging useful comments. It’s the best of both worlds! However, you may need to watch out for spammers as well. I too, will be a little bit more skeptic than before. I will go through the comments  personally before approval. Self-promo or unrelated links are not allowed; suspected link droppers will either have their comments edited or removed.

If you too, had just became a Do-Follow blog, it’s necessary to let your visitors know about it. How? Do-Follow Images! In conjunction with my birthday, I’ve put up the effort to create these self-made do-follow images, F.O.C just for you guys! You can also contact me for customization on the colors and sizes to fit on your site properly. For that, I will charge you NOTHING so don’t worry!

If you don’t need them, can you do me a favor to spread the words? That will be a perfect birthday gift for me too. *chuckle*

T&C:
These Do-Follow images are F.O.C and should not be put on other sites as merchandize or self-claimed design work. The ownership is solely belongs to the author of Social @ Blogging Tracker. Kindly download the images on this site only.

If you can’t find anything you like here, try Sire’s self-made animated image or extremejohn’s.

Is your blog a do-follow blog? Do share your opinions on this topic.

Just the other day, I received a Twitter DM :

I’m not familiar with the user, also a bit skeptic towards the link. Normally I would just pass but my curiosity prompt me to dig deeper. It doesn’t take long to reveal the actual location, yeah, some money-making site. Not a fan so let’s end the story here. But I got a valuable lesson that day, know what it is?

Spam, Phishing & Malware Triggered Links in Disguise!

Oh yes, malicious sites transforming themselves into friendly little shortened URLs, waiting to be clicked! Have you not noticed the recent phishing and hijacking cases via click-fraud?? Nah.. it doesn’t seem like something that’ll happen to us, right? WRONG! I don’t know about you, but I find myself getting a little too comfortable with the links sending my way. I figured there’s a need to spread a little awareness about such matter.

No Worries! I Know How To Deal With It! (but.. Are You??)

So we were told that Twitter is going to block those bad URLs. Great effort, but doesn’t mean we should take this lightly. If you were like me, once thought the below methods are enough to solve our problems than think again:

a. Twitter Search Expand Feature

We LOVE the ‘expand’ feature! Safe and ease to use. Blame me for being the party pooper but not all URL shorteners could be revealed. Don’t believe me? try them out:

Cli.gs / Tr.im / Su.pr / Digg.com / Ow.ly / Tweak.tk

b. Tweetdeck URL Preview Feature

Tweetdeck allows previewing for the link before navigates. Looks safe enough, but what if the link was converted from another shortened URL? It will be displayed as above, the original site address is untraceable, unless you check it manually.

c. FriendFeed Shows Complete URLs

This is much better. FriendFeed shows the complete URLs for all the updates. But what if the link was sent to you via Twitter’s Direct Message? It won’t be shown in the public conversation. How do you go from there? Obviously we need more help than we think.

12 Ways To Expand/Preview Suspicious Shortened URLs

Call me busybody, but I actually checked these 12 apps for the task with below URL Shorteners, sorry I can’t cover ALL that existed. Here’s the overall results I got:

I grouped the URL Shorteners for easier explanations:

Category A (common) :   tinyurl, bit.ly, cli.gs, tr.im, is.gd

Category B (new/framed etc) :   su.pr, digg, owly, tweak.tk

**well what do you know, seems like my previous blog posts still appear in good old Blogger template **

i) Powerful Pack (GREEN): Detectable for ALL category A & B.

#1 PrevURL

**Update: The domain is no longer available. Service terminated.**

• thumbnail to preview the original web page.
• comes with ‘search plugin’ to be installed on your browser. Just copy and paste the shortened URL in the box and hit ‘search’to be brought to the PrevURL site.
  

#2 Longurl

• thumbnail to preview web page.
• plugin available for Firefox: Long URL Mobile expander 2.0.0 (will be discussed in plugin section later).

#3 TheRealURL

• no thumbnail or plugin yet works like a charm. Simple and easy to navigate.

ii) Medium pack (YELLOW): Works perfectly well with category A; minor limitations for B

#4 Sucuri

• no thumbnail previewing.
• special feature: to check whether the real web page is blacklisted via Google Safebrowsing and Siteadvisor.
• has problem detecting Digg.com-shortened URL with question mark ‘?’  in the midst – for example: http://digg.com/d3ym80?t (10/10 trial attempts).

#5 Unshortme

• Simple page layout without preview.
• Unable to detect Ow.ly.

#6 Unshortn

• allows thumbnail preview.
• bookmarklet available. When clicked, all shortenened URLs on that particular page will expand themselves to original web addresses.



• Minor setbacks: To ensure the link converts successfully, preferably paste the shortened URL on top of your web browser then hit ‘Enter’, instead of the ‘Unshorn it’ box’.For Instance: http://unshortn.com/http://su.pr/2gdfR1
• Unable to detect Su.pr.

#7 Urlsnoop

• simple layout with thumbnail preview. No bookmarklet available.
• unable to detect Digg.com

#8 Unshorten

• no plugins or preview feature.
• Unable to retrieve site shortened by Digg.com

#9 ExpandMyURL

• provides bookmarklet on browser: revealing the traceable shortened URLs with green colour. When clicked will redirect to expandmyurl for URL expansion.
  
• Unable to reveal sites shortened by Tweak.tk.

** ExpandMyURL has improved their service to enable shortening for : Su.pr, Ow.ly. A fantastic improvement to promote them from limited to medium pack. Thanks to Alex for the updating mentioned in the comment below. Good job. **

iii) Limited Pack (ORANGE): Works well with Category A; Seriously lacking for B detections.

#10 Untiny

• provides multiple add-ons from bookmarklet, firefox plugin to firefox search.
• unable to retrieve sites from Su.pr, Digg.com

Firefox Plugins:

#11 Long URL Please 0.4.1

• once installed and enabled, reveals the actual location for the shortened URLs. Works perfectly in Twitter, Facebook etc.
• mostly it is effective in expanding Digg.com, but occasionally not.
• unable to retrieve: Tweak.tk

#12 Long URL Mobile expander 2.0.0

• when hover the mouse over the link, actual web address will be revealed.
• unable to retrieve: Su.pr, Tweak.tk.

What About URL converted from URL Shortener:

Original URL detectable for most applications above. Except for these 3: Sucuri, Urlsnoop & Unshortn.

For example, I’ve shrinked the URL using :

http://tinyurl.com/kqocvk , then again, to

http://bit.ly/vZpuf

After tested, here are the results:

URL Shorteners that allowing preview

Some URL shorteners provide settings to enable preview for their service when activated. For instance: TinyURL and Trunc.it.

So What Are Your Takes?

Did you ever experience any click-frauds? How do you normally deal with suspicious links that sent in your way? Love to hear your thoughts.