This is so well-said, entertaining and timely that I can’t think of anything to add.

Thanks for enlightening those of us are clueless. (I must confess being disappointed, however, to learn that the internet is not all about me. Sniff.)

Keep up the great blogging.

And when that happens (which is fairly regularly here), we all get to read, meet, interact with and learn from an ever-widening ripple of hot-blooded/cool-brained creatives at this smart/funny party called ittyBiz.

Just like driving home from a party and chattering with your date about all the neat things you heard and fun people you met, I especially love the take-aways that always bring me back…
(and that’s no 4/1 joke.)

This post of yours has schooled me bigtime. Many thanks, particularly for the reminder that google will remember us (and our comments) forever. Yikes!

I only comment on blogs when I have something to add to the conversation, and I had no idea there was this whole other dimension of “spreading yourself far and wide!” I can see why people would not like it – seems like blogging confetti.

What I meant there was this: Most bloggers have read the advice on the big metablogs saying that commenting is a good marketing strategy. (I come to your blog and if I say something cool, you or your readers might come to my site too. Then maybe they’ll subscribe or click ads or whatever.)

The thing is, though — commenting is easy, and there’s no barrier to entry. People read that advice on a blog with 40,000 readers and they think, “Well, shit. If I go around and comment like a crazy person, I can get 40,000 readers too!” Maybe you can eventually get 40,000 people to your site, but if you do this as a marketing strategy before your blog is ready to be seen by a bunch of people, they come, they see, they leave, they don’t come back. Big fat waste o’ marketing effort.

This doesn’t extend to people who are commenting because they feel like it. If you don’t give a shit if I come to your blog, then have your name link to anything you like — doesn’t matter. But if you’re using it as a strategy — Caroline Middlebrook talks about this a lot — then you should make sure your blog is ready to be viewed before getting asses in the seats.

The potential issue is this — let’s say you leave a really insightful comment on Problogger, thinking that if you do, Darren might come to your site and you’d get on his radar. Good idea. However, if Darren comes to your blog and sees that “Welcome to my blog” default post that WordPress puts up before you’ve published anything, you run the risk of ruining a first impression. Darren (or whoever else) has the first impression of your site as being the one that has no content. It’s not a disaster, but it ruins all your hard work.

One thing I want to emphasize — if you’re commenting on someone’s blog to say, “Hey, congratulations on the birth of your twins!” or “Gee whiz, I love your theme” and that’s all you’re trying to do, you don’t have to worry about this tip. It’s only for when you’re doing it to get new readers, more traffic, subscribers, whatever.