Signatures. Having the last word on your comments.
Posted: February 17, 2008 at 12.19 amWRITTEN BY in Blogging
Another self explanatory title. Always useful.
Before I even get started, I am a ‘for’ leaving signatures on comments. Just needed to get that out of the way so you know where Im at. Certainly not sitting on the fence with this one, unlike most other things in my life. Religion, aliens, ghosts… you name it, I fence sit it. No one can prove or disprove so therefore I cannot make a valid judgment without what ‘I’ call satisfactory evidence.
But anywho, I digress.
To me this is a marketing, self promotion no brainer. Yet the reason why I even bring it up is that I have seen an abundance of posts from very well respected Bloggers saying quite categorically that under no circumstances whatsover should one leave a signature on the comment.
What? Reasons are given, well, not exactly reasons full stop, more of a ‘just don’t do it’. Why the hell not? Ok, the main reason cited is that it’s redundant to leave a signature as we all have to give our details, including URL which automatically creates this ‘marketing/advertising’ link back to our own site. That’s it?
Don’t get me wrong, I am all up for minimalisms, simplicity and anything else that borders on less is just less. Less isn’t more, that just doesn’t compute for me. Righto.
But come on, we are in the business of promoting ourselves and our blogs. We go to extraordinary lengths to promote, market, sell, convince, persuade, lie, offer, blackmail people to come to our own unique patch of Blogturf.
Yet the one major tool we have in our arsenal, comments, we are ‘advised’ to leave sparse minus our signature. This really equates to leaving a blank business card, letterhead or comp slip or company brochure after meeting with a client, they all equate to the same thing. Sell yourself and your site every opportunity you can. Leave your details everywhere and everywhere again. Failure to leave your details just means another failed opportunity.
Comments are your calling card, so make sure the calling card has details on where people can call you. It really is that simple.
Comments are the one place that leaving details about who you are and what you do can and should in my professional opinion should be added, not excluded.
No need to get all silly with it. Most of us leave signatures on emails, so what’s darn wrong with leaving them on comments? I fail to see why we should or ought to not include them. We are contributing to the authors site, to the effort they put in to making this post, so in return we leave a comment with our details. It’s how the world works.
Yet, we are continually told that “it’s just not done“. Leave the message and that’s it. Utter trash basically.
I love leaving comments, and a fair proportion of them are several paragraphs each, I like to make a contribution. I also like to leave my calling card. It’s not much really, it looks like this.
Graham Smith
ImJustBlogging
“Web & Blog Ramblings from ‘my’ Gutter”
I fail to see what is so wrong with leaving these inoffensive few lines at the end of a comment. It says who I am, where Im at and what I do. Nothing more, nothing less. I realise some sites strip of any HTML, so what. That’s OK, I still get to leave my calling card with a descriptive title even if the link is made redundant. Still a useful visual tool.
I understand that some blog owners DO allow signatures, but with a limitation on how many words or lines you can have. I guess that makes perfect sense, but for these sites, my signature would then be dissalowed at it’s too long. But is it really that offensive, does it really cause any significant issues?
Maybe as a compromise I could adapt it so… One line, remove my name as that DOES appear at the top of every comment and put the remaining two lines on one line. Is this more appropriate?
ImJustBlogging “Web & Blog Ramblings from ‘my’ Gutter”
It helps me, and it helps the people who read the comments see if I could be worth a visit rather than just reading comment with the standard linked Name at the top of every post. When I read other comments I am also on the look out for other blogs that I might like. At the moment, I just click a name and hope it takes me somewhere nice. Sometime yes, sometime no.
A signature would help me make that decision. It’s a little more information that I need to help me when Im scanning pages for helpful information. And who was that author who famously wrote, “Don’t make me think?”.
It’s just common sense marketing, advertising, self promotion, blog awareness sensibility.
Am I missing something here? I have 20 years experience in commercial marketing, advertising, print and design, so do know a fair bit about what works and what doesn’t in the real world. In Blogging years I am a newcomer, but the principles are pretty much the same. I’m not an expert,but neither am I naivé.
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graham’s last blog post..Signatures. Having the last word on your comments.
Graham, the signature thing doesn’t bother me, although I rarely do it. Something you may want to consider when leaving multiple comments on the same thread, is that the “calling card” doesn’t need to be dropped each time, especially if the comments are within close proximity to each other.
Because then, it just looks like signature spam. Once per thread is ideal as far as I’m concerned.
RT>
Yup, very valid point. In fact I tend not to do that myself on a chain of comments, although it’s a habit for me. I try to at least not include the link for the very reason you say with spamming. As you say once is enough on the same thread.
Using my analogies above, that would be like going for a business meeting, dropping your business card on the table before you go to the toilet, then come back, chat some more, leave the table to get a drink and… drop another card on the table before you do that. The first card was appropriate, the second card just over hedging your bets. Yada yada. :0)
The point really is to get over the importance of branding yourself at every opportunity. You can fine tune it as appropriate but at the end of the day, leaving comments is a real chance to help ‘market aware’ your own Blog name etc.
As long as it’s done tastefully then I just feel more people ought to consider it. For me, because I know I only tend to leave essay length comments, Im ok with leaving a signature. For the one liners, or the ‘great site’, yes, maybe not so appropriate. It’s like working to earn the right to ‘advertise yourself’. So this yes, could be abused, but then this is why the author can at least moderate the piss taking amongst us. Cruel but harsh. :)
From my perspective-and this is the important thing, I would of visited your site sooner had I seen your Blog name on your comment. This is such a strong visual clue and incentive for other readers. I do like checking out the Blogs of people who leave comments, but with no visual clue as to what they are about other than a name, I really feel a simple opportunity is being wasted.
I guess for Blog’s and authors who already have a more established Blog, going to all these lengths can be tiresome. But not one Blogger I know would miss the opportunity to spread some links, so why not, at least, your Blog Title associated with your name. It’s just a mind set thing I guess.
So here’s a idea for a plug-in. Along with the required NAME, EMAIL and WEBSITE. An option to leave your Blog Name (which gets shown alongside your name in the comments), then this way it’s all controlled by the site owner, and may encourage this self branding on a more consistent level.
You can see I got the Top Commentators up now, although not working perfect it, also added the Comment Feed option for each post which I was amazed was not a standard option. I only just found this out myself on my site. Oppps.
Anywho, that’s me waffling again.
I was having somewhat of a crisis about the whole leaving a signature in comments because at many of the larger blogs where I spend my time (mostly Gawker media sites) I don’t see much of it. I thought it might be a bad idea, but at the same time I don’t comment often on these sites, and when I do it’s because I have something that I really want to say (and hopefully I’m adding to the value of the site). I’m not one for the “first post” thing with my comment. Just today I left what would amount to probably a 3 page comment on LifeHacker - I spent a lot of time writing what I posted, so I sure as hell am going to leave my blog address!
I try and follow RT’s model as well - if I comment multiple times I just leave my sig on the first one. People don’t need to see it a million times.
So far no one has complained and it has resulted in additional traffic coming to my site. If people comment on my blog they are more than welcome to leave their own links if they contribute to the discussion.
With that said, I enjoy some sigs!
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