Why Blog Comments are your best friend.

Writing by Chris Lang on Thursday, 26 of June , 2008 at 9:16 pm Leave a comment

Blog comments are your best resource, both on your blog and when you leave comments other blogs and here’s why.

Blog comments on your blog allow you to get feed back from your readers, both good and bad. Your buyers will post favorable mini testimonials that you use in emails, salesletters and in blubs in blog posts.

Better yet you receive OBJECTIONS and “This cannot possibly work” type comments. And get this, they are your best resource.

Yeah, the ones that do not buy. Those that do not buy or better yet, ask you questions and express objections to your ideas and products are pure GOLD.

Do you know what a salesman does after a presentation? He waits. He sits back a waits for the lead (who is about to be a client but does not know it yet) to speak first. Have you ever heard of the situation where the guy who speaks first loses?

Well that is what I am talking about here.

The first thing that usually comes out of a lead’s mouth is reasons they do not want to buy and you actually want this to happen. These are called “objections” in salesman speak. Objections allow you to provide resolutions and are a salesman’s best friend.

“It’s too big”, “It’s too small”, “My wife won’t let me buy that” or “It doesn’t seem worth the price” are all common objections. In a one on one sales presentation that is easy to handle, they are called resolutions. Objections and resolutions, remember that.

In your sales process, whatever it is you sell, you should be getting some type of “objection” feedback. It can come in emails and in your blog comments. That is my favorite. I approve them everytime.

If you are getting objections then that is great, you can use these to circumvent stop points in your salesletter where a lead would otherwise walk away.

When you address objections directly in your comments you are that salesman that has won the moment, when the soon to be client speaks first. Answer them intelligently and gracefully but whatever you do support them with documentation, both from yourself and with links to authority sites. Then you are setting yourself up for success. Don’t have documentation? Google it. Look in Blogsearch for the most timely, up to date items.

When I get these types of comments and these types of situations I direct my readers to be sure to read the comments.

I had a guy tell me that he could outrank me for any term easily after a case study of how a I got another Blogger ranked #1 using social bookmarking and Digg.

He left a comment longer than my blog post saying I was totally wrong and that social bookmarking had no effect on Google! Well that pretty much set me off so I added the comment as the first half of a blog post and responded to it as the second half. Cool huh, he already half wrote a free article for me.

I told him he had valid points but that we should test it with a “who can out rank who contest” between us.

Next day same thing, huge comment left on the blog. So, guess what, free article part 2. Now he said he would welcome the challenge, that social bookmarking was worthless and that he could beat me in rankings under a predetermined term.

That all ended when I said, “Okay, lets take our own blog rankings and subscribers out of this and we will both sign up to new Blogger blogs and see who wins, name any term you want. Have not heard from him since.

In fact a number of my readers posted it on social sites with a spin like a Rocky Balboa movie portraying me as the under dog. Now that is gold. I even said I would take on all comers, no responses. My readers loved it.

I took a real chance here, the guy could have kicked my butt and embarrassed me, but I headed that one off too. I said “Even if you beat me I will figure out how you did it and add it to my eBook.” Now I am unafraid to take all comers (big risk) in my readers eyes and even if I lose they profit from the contest and learn from it.

The bottom line

Getting feedback from your readers my take some training. Some may be unfamiliar to blog comments and others may be just plain scared. I constantly ask my newsletter subscribers to comment and direct them to the link to add their comments, questions or feedback.

If you are not getting these kinds of objection comments then one of two things are happening.

Your product is not something out side the box or your blog is not supporting the product. Everything I write is information that supports my product and you should be doing the same thing too and portraying it in a good light. You should be bringing out objections and answering them in your new posts. Then directing you readers to the article and constantly portraying yourself as responsive to readers comments good or bad.

Next up is part 2 to this article about how YOUR comments on other blogs can do you even more good. See you soon.

Chris Lang is a social marketing consultant, working from home he devises wickedly evil social marketing tactics and tries to take over the world.

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Category: Blog Comments

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