BLOGGING FOR FREEDOM |
HOW TO AVOID BLOG SPAM |
Attribution negligence usually occurs with bloggers who read many other blogs. Most topical bloggers do, in fact, stay up to speed with other blogs in their field, usually using a newsreader to check feeds. As part of the daily survey of what’s being written where, bloggers link to news stories being discussed and cited in other blogs. Then, wishing to join the discussion with some original commentary, a blogger might also link to the same news source and build an entry around it. The proper attribution in that case is to give credit to the blog in which you saw the linked article. You didn’t find the article on your own, and failing to attribute credit makes it seem as if you did. In the blogosphere, this is a big deal. Naturally, as a topical blogger, you do find some articles on your own, because you probably read feeds from online newspapers in addition to blog feeds. But when one blogger takes the lead in linking to an article and developing blog commentary around it, that blogger deserves credit for influencing other bloggers in his or her readership.
You’re probably familiar with spam; most people think of it as junk e-mail. Actually, spam has a broader definition and refers to any unwanted, irrelevant, or inappropriately placed promotion. In the blogosphere, spam is not quite as pestilent as in e-mail, but it is a major problem in high-profile blogs. It doesn’t always work. Like e-mail spam, blog spam is persistent, sometimes delivered by automated software bots that rip through blogs depositing junk comments. Most blogs present a smaller spam target than a big blog network. Even so, spam can be an issue. Individuals with something to sell (often affiliate marketers who receive commissions for driving traffic to commercial sites) visit blogs of all sizes to leave semirelevant or completely irrelevant comments that include links to their affiliate sites. I won’t insult any reader by saying “Don’t do that” about these flagrant forms of comment spam. The point of this chapter is to warn you away from inadvertently crossing a line in your eagerness to be seen and heard in the blogosphere. The mistake some people make is to overparticipate in the comment sections of other blogs, sprinkling comments around indiscriminately. Many blogs offer commenters the chance to embed a Web site (such as their own blog) into the comment; the commenter’s name becomes the link to that person’s blog. If you make too many lightweight comments with that link in place, it conveys the impression that you’re more interested in promoting your site than in contributing meaningfully to the blog discussion.
The same danger holds true for barely relevant comments, even if they are few in number. Some of these are flagrantly promotional. It’s common to see this type of comment: “I agree completely. See my write-up on this subject at www.MyBlog.com.” Such a comment leaves a poor impression, and although I cannot cite statistics, I believe that self-promotions like this do not attract many clicks. Granted, sometimes the write-up being advertised is a fabulous entry that should be read by everyone. In that case, a better tactic is to summarize the entry as a comment in the other blog, and over the course of many meaningful comments build your name’s reputation for high-quality discussion. As a rule, never spell out a link to your own blog in a comment. If you build a reputation for good blogging, readers in your topic will recognize you by name, and you’ll get your traffic that way.