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Every brand (big or small) should embrace comments as a core part of their overall marketing strategy. Two primary type of comment marketing strategy; writing great thought provoking content that motivates the visitor to leave a comment or “comment tagging” on high visibility blogs and web sites that drive backlinks and traffic.
Let’s face it visitors are for the most part hungry for information and insight and most are in a hurry - that’s “digital Darwinism” at its worst.
You may not be monitoring your inbound comments properly; a combination of process and technology
There is no active solicitation of comments (“add your thoughts below” “recommend your favorite applications”) - you’ll drive many more comments via solicitation.
You may not care about comments - some brands and businesses don’t have the staffing, technology in place and/or ability to respond to inbound comments. Some web sites have comments turned off for these reasons!
Social media is killing comments for smaller brands. The dialogue, interaction and content push is occurring off-site - the audience is on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn and many are not engaging and/or clicking back to a web site.
It is but you can’t distinguish the spam from the quality (see below) - your not alone, although this is scant consolation for many.
If you look at big brand web sites like Huffington Post, CNN or Gawker you will find a lot of self-serving pontificating that is not true engagement. Many “comment taggers” are looking for personal or professional publicity - the day’s of “value added comments” are falling by the wayside.
Take your pick, “left wing” (a la Keith Olbermann) or “right wing” Andrew Breitbart; comments on these sites are in many cases either so caustic they don’t really ad value or just an endless amplification of the editorial perspective of the authors or media companies behind the “talking heads.”
But, in the end, these bigger media brands are all about generating traffic, selling ads and engagement is being pushed to the social web or so filtered via editors, the comments are meaningless to many; or, just an after thought.
Ask for them. This may sound trite; but, like any marketing strategy, you must have some structure in your marketing processes to make them work. Be awesome, controversial (think about the “Kony 2012” video dust-up that’s fired up media critiques throughout the world, while scoring some points for the filmmakers. Be controversial, ask questions - be engaging: pique the visitor’s interest in taking action with a comment. Don’t drive comments - this is good advice for many small businesses! If your weighing comments versus creating a social media marketing presence via Facebook, Pinterest or Twitter, you may be much better off ignoring comments. And, for better or worse, the conversation for many brands in this new Web 2.0 era is moving to social; either to a specific platform or via social media account integration with a brand’s actual web site. Marketing strategy is always shifting and morphing. Make your life easier (the words all marketers and execs want to hear) - embrace Open Source, use WordPress for your web site platform and download and use Akismet’s plug-in - they are the market leaders in comment technology for good reason. Build a brand - for better or worse, comments are driven by old fashioned brand awareness, whether your the mythical Donald Draper or a Mashable geek, comments are all driven by effective brand building. That’s our take - got a comment dive in below - love to hear from you. No words harmed in this post and the marketing strategy is implicit in the content!
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Oscar Carter
Hi Lee, You were my 3,000th twitter follower and I twitted you the Creating A World Community T-Shirt. I see you are an expert on blogging and internet marketing. I found your post on comments educational. What are your thoughts about the Empower Network?