tag:,2008:/1/tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491- 2008-09-24T11:44:41Z Comments for How to Comment About Your Company on Blog Posts, Without Being Spammy Movable Type 4.1 tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491 2008-06-06T17:54:31Z 2008-06-06T19:39:40Z How to Comment About Your Company on Blog Posts, Without Being Spammy For every 1000 people who read a tech blog post, there may be one that leaves a comment. Lurking in the crowd are any number of people who work for companies related to the subject of the post. They almost never comment, and when they do they often come across as obnoxious, self-promoting and spammy.... Marshall Kirkpatrick http://www.readwriteweb.com emailmeheart.jpgFor every 1000 people who read a tech blog post, there may be one that leaves a comment. Lurking in the crowd are any number of people who work for companies related to the subject of the post. They almost never comment, and when they do they often come across as obnoxious, self-promoting and spammy. It doesn't have to be that way, though.

]]> There are a number of ways that you can join in a conversation online, even though you have economic interests in it. You who work in the various sectors we cover often know far more about the products, people and trends at issue than we who cover a relatively broad beat do. We like it when you leave good and useful comments. What do those look like?

Being transparent about who you are and what your interests are is fundamental, but beyond that there are a variety of ways you can add value instead of being an annoyance. Below, we discuss five of those ways; we hope you'll add thoughts of your own about how to comment appropriately - unless you work for one of the comment hosting companies, of course (just kidding!).

The Fundamental Mood of a Good Comment

Bad comments from companies are loud, self-centered, only semi-relevant and often have the tone of a spurned lover. Good comments from companies are super humble, gently engaged with competitors and focused on adding value to the discussion of the whole sector.

A Grey Area

One comment type that lives in a grey area is the "don't forget about us" comment. That's one of the most common types. It's annoying. This author at least welcomes emails like this because it's hard to remember all the relevant companies in any given sector. Leaving a "what about me?" comment publicly though just looks bad.

Here are five ways you can add more value than by just throwing your company's name and link into a blog post's comments. An example is provided for each strategy; these are decent examples, really great examples are still too rare, unfortunately. We know you're capable of really nailing it though and we don't want you to be afraid to try.

1. Update Us on New Developments

When we write about any company or service, one thing that we ought to make sure we do is consider where that company's competitors are in the market. We hope to compare feature sets, user growth and any number of other factors. That's easier said than done, though, so we welcome comments from competitors that provide us updates about where their service is at.

raisedhands.jpgThis is especially true when we're talking about a new technology that only a limited number of vendors have implemented support for. A good recent example can be found in the comments on our story about C-Shirt, the Creative Commons remixable t-shirts passed on by QR code and mobile phones. QR codes are common in Japan but are just starting to emerge in other places.

In a comment responding to that post, Eric from a semi-competitive company called SpringLeap complimented C-Shirt's integration of QR codes and Creative Commons, then pointed out that SpringLeap would soon be adding QR code support to their online clothing service too. QR codes are unusual enough that we were glad to learn about another company moving in that direction.

Feel free to comment about updates to your service that we may not be aware of when they aren't so rare, either. If you can focus on the update more than on the "me too" feel, then we'll appreciate you taking the time to broaden our knowledge of the field.

2. Clarify Your Product or Market Position

Never is it as obvious that top tech bloggers have limited knowledge about the things we write about than when we write about you or your company. Who knew we could be so wrong?

At those times, a good blogger will welcome your clarification. We may not have used your product enough to know about the big differences between it and other products it got thrown in a list with. We might have some real misconceptions about where the company stands in growth, history or target audience. Please, let us know in comments so we can be more informed next time we write about you or your sector in the future. This is a conversation!

When we wrote about the adoption rate of Microsoft Silverlight earlier this week, we said it could be picking up the pace compared to the adoption rate of Adobe Flash. We were (I was) wrong in our assessment of the situation. Adobe's John Dowdell jumped in to comments and put some numbers in perspective for us. He also offered some analytical perspective of his own, as someone deeply engaged in these issues. His comment wasn't particularly gentle, but that's ok - he works for Adobe and we were very wrong in the assertion he was commenting on.

3. Articulate Differentiation

You know your company and your competitors better than we do. Tech bloggers tend to know the nitty gritty about one or two niches that they personally engage with most closely, but we often write about far more than that. That's ok, but we could use your help, vendors, in fleshing out the details and differences between various service offerings. Our readers come to our sites to learn about what tools are available to solve particular problems. There is no way we could articulate the full breadth of options and the differences between them as well as we plus our commenting readers can.

As long as you don't stop at "me too," go on too long or talk only about yourselves - comments about differentiation are more than welcome.

When we wrote about hedge fund power research suite FirstRain in April, we mentioned another service called RivalMap. RivalMap's Kris Rasmussen jumped into comments and let us know his company's product was adding several of the features that FirstRain offers (foreshadowing yesterday's announcement of a partnership with Newsgator) but that the primary differentiation was a price margin of tens of thousands of dollars!

There are probably even better examples of company comments intended to articulate differentiation. One of the inspirations for this post was a comment left by Iterasi (disclosure: a consulting client) in a post about competitor LaterLoop over at WebWorkerDaily. Company blogger Alex Williams thanked WWD's Jason Harris for mentioning his company in a review of a competitor, praised the competitor's unique feature set, then articulated some fundamental differences between the companies that Harris didn't mention in his review and finally closed the comment with more appreciation for the competitor. That's a model example of a company adding value in a dignified way to a blog post about a competitor.

4. Talk Up the Other Team

Have you seen the blog posts on places like TechCrunch or GigaOm about one company announcing a round of funding or being acquired, where that company's competitors leave a nice short comment simply congratulating them on their good fortunes? Just a short congrats, signed by the name of a representative of a competitor, with their name linked via the URL field in comments to their company's site. That's classy. Don't throw your URL into the text of the comment or take that time to talk yourself up. Just offer a dignified congratulations and the unspoken message is that your niche is further validated, a rising tide lifting all boats. Don't act like you're drowning.

A different but good example of this kind of comment can be seen in our April post about the ongoing success of aggregator PopURLs. We wrote about PopURL's new sponsored collaboration with Intel.

Semi-related competitor DIYStartupNews.com left the following comment:

"This ia great idea and reminds me of techmemes sponsored news sources.

This is smart marketing move by intel, more companies should look at sponsored branding of sites like this. I should imagine they are getting a good return on their investment. "

Well, we bet you think it's a great idea, DIY, maybe you'd like a little of that kind of action yourself. Also, why enter your URL in the "name" field? Is that what your mother calls you? We'd love to get to know you as a person in this industry.

Criticism aside, that was a good comment - PopURLs did come up with a smart model that's reminiscent of another successful model, Techmeme's sponsored feeds. We hadn't thought of that comparison, otherwise we would have mentioned it. That was a useful celebration of PopURLs' success and a good comment to leave.

5. Add Humor or Insider Insights

People who eat, sleep and breathe wikis, video hosting or local review sites for example all have jokes, details and perspectives that those of us who simply use and occasionally write about such services just can't have. Leave some of that information in comments! We'll all feel smarter, we'll feel like ReadWriteWeb is the place to come for deep insider knowledge and everyone will appreciate you and your company for it!

When we wrote about the growing number of serious uses for wikis last month, Whit from Wiki.Answers.com jumped into comments and pointed out that Comscore called Wiki.Answers the fastest growing site of 2007. Touche! That was something that we suspect wiki-heads probably knew. (I've consulted for wiki companies and remember now that Wiki.Answers were mentioned as a big player.) As a non-specialist in the field of wikis, though, that's the kind of detail that I just didn't know. It was self promotional, and a link would have been nice, but it's an undeniably important detail in a general conversation about the growth of wikis.

An even better example of offering insider knowledge in comments can be found in a comment from this morning to our coverage of Japanese video site NicoDou. Jane from Akibanana.com, a news site that supports a company offering tours of a particular Japanese sub-culture, left an incredibly helpful comment that included two good links to sites other than hers, some updates on the topic of the post and other information that we simply didn't have the context to include in our original post. It was a fantastic comment and gave readers a great reason to click through the commenter's name to learn about the company she represents.

Conclusion

A lot of this is common sense, but some of it is particular to the emerging culture of the social media market. We're blessed at least in the US to have a very active social media economy - so lots of our readers here have jobs with companies related to the subjects of our writing. We want you to participate, you have so much you can add! It can be a great way for you to increase you visibility in the market, as well. See our post about the New Robert Scobles for a discussion about other ways this can be done.

If we saw half as many simple "don't forget about me!" comments and twice as many comments focused on humbly adding value to the conversation from the perspective of someone working at a related company - the quality of conversation in the tech blogosphere would be dramatically improved. We'd love to see that happen.

Are there other ways you've seen value added appropriately in comments by company representatives? We'd love to learn about more strategic options; spamminess is really annoying, learning together is fun and fulfilling.

Images via Flickr CC: "I Must Be Getting Old" by idogcow and "Welcome Hands" by dtcchc

]]> tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57150 Comment from Lee - eBooks AudioBooks and Cybooks on 2008-06-06 Lee - eBooks AudioBooks and Cybooks http://booksonboard.com/ Another tool I've seen websites use to avoid spammy comments is Keyword Luv. Basically instead of entering XCompany in the "Name" field, I would enter in Lee@XCompany, and it would show up as "Lee from XCompany". That way instead of a nameless entity, a real person is leaving a comment.

]]> 2008-06-06T18:35:10Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57152 Comment from mikepk on 2008-06-06 mikepk http://mikepk.com Marshall, you make some good points in the post, but this "spam vs salient comment" line can be very thin and easy to inadvertently cross.

For example, I saw your tweet to Ben Greenberg about his "how to use RSS and OPML" post on the "Physicians for Human Rights" blog to check out Grazr, so I thought I'd leave a (what I thought was relevant and helpful) comment to show him what you could do with Grazr. The actual text of the comment was:

Hi Ben, saw your tweet exchange with MarshallK and thought I’d leave a comment here. Seems like Grazr (http://grazr.com) would be a good fit for showing people what’s possible with RSS feeds. Grazr is all about adding structure around feeds and allowing you to republish them in a very visible and easy to browse way. Our current focus is “streams” (blended collections of feeds from an OPML) but we also have tools for browsing and displaying opml directly in web pages.

At Grazr.com you can get the embed code to add a widget directly into your blog post to give your readers an immediate preview of what’s in the opml and the feeds (let them read it right here without downloading anything).

Our site has some shortcomings in terms of UI and can be a bit daunting/confusing, but this link will give you access to our “Create a widget” page for your OPML file where you can get the embed code.

http://www.grazr.com/config?fontsize=14pt&view=o&font=Helvetica&theme=gloss_silver&file=http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/students/human-rights-rss-feeds.opml

Don’t hesitate to contact me via e-mail if you’re interested in using this and want support or help with this.

I noticed after a while that it never left moderation, so I asked Ben directly. His response was "it read too much like marketing in that context". On reflection and re-reading the comment, I can see his perspective, but in all honestly my primary intent was to actually help him with the problem he was writing about. It's a fine line, something you think is relevant and helpful can easily be interpreted in "sales/marketing" kind of way.

]]> 2008-06-06T18:52:13Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57154 Comment from Shannon Clark on 2008-06-06 Shannon Clark http://slowbrand.com One key point you hinted at but I think is worth noting specifically is that great comments tend to clearly identify who someone is, including who they work for/represent especially if it is a competitor.

i.e. in many of the cases you mention you already knew the commentator, but readers of your blog might not have in all cases - but without having read the individual comments you cite yet I do assume that in most cases the commentator made it fairly clear who they were within the format of the comments.

(the URL field can sometimes be tricky - as I did with this post I tend to link to one of my personal blogs, which do have about pages that further identify me, if I were leaving a comment on a post about a competitor however I would have to think about where to link & how to identify myself)

]]> 2008-06-06T18:56:22Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57155 Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-06-06 Marshall Kirkpatrick Mike, that's an interesting example. I'd argue that the length of the comment and the degree to which it was focused on Grazr makes me think it would have made a better blog post on your own blog linking to Ben's post as a potential use case. Also, it's one thing to talk about a product on a commercial blog that writes about products - another thing to talk about your product on the blog of a nonprofit organization that talks about political issues, as was the case here. Posting comments about your product to non-product oriented blogs is a sticky situation, as you saw in this case. None the less, as I told Ben myself on Twitter, Grazr is a good tool for helping him do what he sought to do. I think non-profits can have a *particularly anti-commercial bent* though and that could have been part of it. Very interesting example to discuss though.


**Shannon, that's a great point to bring up. There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I don't know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I feel like linking to a personal blog where your job is clearly identified is fair game if you are commenting as an individual.

]]> 2008-06-06T18:57:44Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57156 Comment from mikepk on 2008-06-06 mikepk http://mikepk.com I totally understand the non-profit angle here and why I see Ben's perspective, it wasn't my intent to be 'marketing' when I started writing the comment (aside, I suppose, from 'good marketing' helping out with a tool that really would help here).

It's sometimes easy to cross these lines inadvertently. The first problem is that I'm probably too wordy :). But then the text of my comment actually evolved from trying to highlight the widget, the thing that would help him, without being confusing. Grazr has lots of (non-technical) problems, with the messaging, UI design, and paths through the site as some of the biggest. Since the focus of our homepage and messaging is river-of-news like streams, I thought I should mention that to be clear. Then I realized I should at least describe something about what the widget does and why he would want to check it out. It was an evolution of words, but I can see how the end result, with its length and repeated mention of grazr, and especially when seen through a non-profit lens seemed to be "mareketing heavy".

The path to spam is paved with good intentions? :)

]]> 2008-06-06T19:18:28Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57157 Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-06-06 Marshall Kirkpatrick Mike, the path to spam is definitely paved with good intentions!

]]> 2008-06-06T19:19:57Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57161 Comment from Ben Carcio on 2008-06-06 Ben Carcio http://www.bizunite.com Great post, but let me tell you about my totally unrelated company BizUnite. At BizUnite, we give independent businesses Goliath Clout to compete....No seriously, great post. Helpful for a eager start-up executive seeking to get some traction.

BC

]]> 2008-06-06T20:06:56Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57163 Comment from Andrew on 2008-06-06 Andrew Great post Marshall. The "spurned lover " post is one I see far too often - the "you wrote about them, but you won't write about us??" comments are probably the worst of the bunch. I'm always surprised how many comments I see like that.

I have to agree with Shannon's observation as well. Anytime someone comments with the intent of representing their company, it's always much more helpful when they sign the comment like they would an email. It adds a sense of civility, I think.

I can't think if any more specific ways to leave great comments, but I think the overall rule should be to treat it like a conversation you'd have in person. If a group of people were talking about a company that just launched, you wouldn't jump in and blurt out the name of your company. You'd find a way to introduce yourself into the conversation, either by continuing the theme, asking a question, or offering a different perspective.

]]> 2008-06-06T20:09:16Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57164 Comment from Judi Sohn on 2008-06-06 Judi Sohn http://www.webworkerdaily.com You forgot about those folks who post about their product in multiple posts, even if the line is thin at best. Those are the ones that annoy me the most.

"Speaking of green widgets, our green pandas are great because..."

"Speaking of big animals, our green pandas are great because..."

"Speaking things that breathe, our green pandas are great because..."

]]> 2008-06-06T20:09:59Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57165 Comment from Marshall Kirkpatrick on 2008-06-06 Marshall Kirkpatrick Judi, that's the worst! Good call, I think I was blocking those people from my mind.

]]> 2008-06-06T20:20:16Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57167 Comment from Michael Arrington on 2008-06-06 Michael Arrington http://www.techcrunch.com Great post Marshall.

]]> 2008-06-06T20:48:37Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57168 Comment from Paul D on 2008-06-06 Paul D http://www.timeshareads.com/blog Seems like the answer may arrive as a "high-tech/high-touch" cliche'. We all want to exploit (in a good sense) the added value of new technologies as they emerge. But in our early use and zealous excitement of the new toys, it is easy to forget about the content of what we are doing: adding value and substance to a discussion. Bring something to the table!

]]> 2008-06-06T20:52:43Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57172 Comment from Todd on 2008-06-06 Todd Marshall did you know that my company, D1sc0unt Ph4rm4cy, has all the prescriptions at the best prices and can be conveniently ordered with just a click of a button?

Meds I sell (please remove the "a" in front of each med):

* aValium
* aXanax
* aAmbiem
* aPhentermime
* aCiali
* aViagra
* aAtivan
* aCelebrex

Great post BTW!

Todd

]]> 2008-06-06T22:20:02Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57181 Comment from Mark Sigal on 2008-06-06 Mark Sigal http://www.thenetworkgarden.com Marshall, I would add to the mix the use of a comment that extends the conversation specifically by pointing to a blog post that the commenter has written, which may reference his/her company's product in the context of the thesis being put forth but isn't outright selling anything.

This is more of a breadcrumb approach way of saying "buy our vision, then buy our products."

A tiny bit off-topic, but I have written a post that attempts to formally answer the WHY BLOG question (including frequent commenting on other blogs). It's called:

Why I Blog: it's about Brand, not Bread
http://thenetworkgarden.com/weblog/2008/05/why-i-blog-its.html

Check it out if interested. I think that it's relevant to your post.

Mark

]]> 2008-06-07T01:12:03Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57192 Comment from Rob on 2008-06-06 Rob http://www.bestwebimage.com This wasn't one of my greatest posts, but I just wrote an article today about In Forum Advertising. It's about a site the markets your product through forum posts. It's getting more difficult to know what is quality content on the net these days, and that especially includes comments on blogs like these. Argggggg... There has to be a better way to market than leaving a trail of bread crumbs.

]]> 2008-06-07T04:56:19Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57200 Comment from Bilal Hameed on 2008-06-07 Bilal Hameed http://www.startupmeme.com Never is it as obvious that top tech bloggers have limited knowledge about the things we write about than when we write about you or your company. Who knew we could be so wrong?

Can't be more true. Excellent post Marshall.

BTW is comment 13 a spam ? Once I was browsing through an older post of yours and I came across two spam comments on that post. Is your spam filter really working ?

]]> 2008-06-07T13:16:01Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57209 Comment from Philip James on 2008-06-07 Philip James http://www.snooth.com @Bilal - #13 is clearly a joke. Fairly amusing on its own, doubly so now that you fell for it.

]]> 2008-06-07T18:44:32Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57220 Comment from Bob and Weave on 2008-06-07 Bob and Weave http://tardis-db.co.uk/2008/06/official-gmail-blog-introducing-gmail.html I have to agree with Shannon's observation as well. Anytime someone comments with the intent of representing their company, it's always much more helpful when they sign the comment like they would an email. It adds a sense of civility, I think.

]]> 2008-06-07T23:04:02Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57228 Comment from Rich on 2008-06-07 Rich http://inqdrop.com/ This is not spam!

Sincerely,
The guys and ghouls @ INQdrop.com

]]> 2008-06-08T01:31:17Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57306 Comment from Nigel Eccles on 2008-06-09 Nigel Eccles http://www.hubdub.com Really nice post.

It is really funny sometimes to actually click on the links that commentators (obviously company connected) post up with the lead "How is this different to ?". It is usually a motley crew of tangentally related poorly executed sites with no idea how to differentiate themselves.

Maybe there could be a auto script that generates a response to any commentator that writes that links to this article?

]]> 2008-06-09T11:52:53Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57312 Comment from Emily W on 2008-06-09 Emily W http://www.needish.cl/people/emily Great post! I'm just starting out in community management/social media and trying to learn how to do it well - resources like this article are incredibly helpful. As our company is based in Chile but looking to launch in the US, it's all a bit new to us. mikepk's example is something that I worry about as well, how to show your own genuine enthusiasm and share the fact that your product is useful in this case without being spammy. I guess it's all just a learning process. Thanks again!

]]> 2008-06-09T14:52:00Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57349 Comment from Jerrnej on 2008-06-09 Jerrnej http://www.bringler.com Excellent post! Thanks for sharing.

]]> 2008-06-09T21:33:49Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57465 Comment from Serge Vershin on 2008-06-10 Serge Vershin http://www.heaventools.com Good post but not cool enough to rule. I usually never comment on posts, and yet I can't help leaving a comment: people never learn, they will always spam you!

]]> 2008-06-10T14:27:58Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57492 Comment from Baris on 2008-06-10 Baris http://www.baris-solution.de Good Posting, Thx ;) And this is not spam. :D

]]> 2008-06-10T17:23:31Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:57535 Comment from Eric on 2008-06-10 Eric http://www.springleap.com The entire team at springleap (& especially me as I wrote the original comment) is HIGHLY FLATTERED that springleap.com was mentioned in this posting on readwriteweb.

Thanks for making our day!

Eric

]]> 2008-06-10T22:39:21Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:58275 Comment from Church of Dim Sum on 2008-06-18 Church of Dim Sum http://www.churchofdimsum.org I often see the repeated comments, laden with links to places. I had to disable commenting on one site, since the spambots were dumping 4000 comments or more on a single entry, all of it garbage.

I like captcha or moderated comments, so you can at least limit it to real people.

If there is one comment, compared to multiple, it is less painful on others.

]]> 2008-06-18T19:56:47Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:58447 Comment from ankara evden eve nakliyat on 2008-06-21 ankara evden eve nakliyat http://www.ankara-nakliyat.name.tr good article.

]]> 2008-06-21T08:41:07Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:58451 Comment from Daniel Tunkelang on 2008-06-21 Daniel Tunkelang http://thenoisychannel.blogspot.com/ Nice article that resonates with me personally. My blog covers material that is very related to the work I do at Endeca. Nonetheless, when I blog, comment on other people's blogs, or even clean up pages on Wikipedia, it is essential that I come across as myself, not some marketing bot.

Not that I am shy about self-promotion. I do encourage you to check out The Noisy Channel if you want to learn more about information science.

]]> 2008-06-21T13:00:07Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:58528 Comment from Airline Cheap Tickets on 2008-06-22 Airline Cheap Tickets http://www.airline-cheaptickets.com Airline tickets finding the right discount airline tickets or cheap airline tickets is one of the most grand yet rewarding airline travel experiences of airline tickets.

]]> 2008-06-23T06:06:24Z tag:www.readwriteweb.com,2008://1.6491-comment:59601 Comment from Carl on 2008-07-05 Carl http://www.zeljkovlahovic.com Dear members of this community,
I want to help and make the exceptional classical pianist Zeljko Vlahovic well known. I have not yet used blogs for this purpose and would like to know whether this could be the right way. Recordings of some concerts have been published on YOUTUBE: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=zeljko+vlahovic
www.zeljkovlahovic.com

Can anyone tell me what I should do?
Thanks for help. ;-))

]]> 2008-07-05T08:26:38Z