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When I released my first book back in 2009, I had a small Internet following from my entertainment blog. While social media was extremely helpful in garnering attention for my book, I needed to figure out other ways to market my book, drive traffic to my website, as well as to convert traffic into sales. I visited websites of authors and entrepreneurs who’d successfully created a following and they consistently shared how blog comments can help sell books or products.

Initially this logic made absolutely no sense to me. I’d been a lurker since I’d joined the Internet. I would visit blogs, websites, nings, and message boards and no matter how great I thought the content was I’d never leave a comment. And quite frankly I didn’t understand how leaving a comment would drive traffic to my blog or help sell books.

That is until I happened upon Gary Vaynerchuk’s website. He was a proponent of supporting other websites in order to gain traffic onto your own site. Based on the following he’d amassed, I knew it had to work. He warned it took time, but I figured I had nothing to lose since I was visiting these other sites anyway.  I took Gary’s advice and started commenting to the sites owner whatever my initial thoughts were once I read their content. I tried to leave something of value, not just, “Great post!” but something relevant and useful.

For example, if I were on a site and someone discussed how they were having difficulties with book marketing, I would leave an insightful comment that would be beneficial to the blogger and their audience. Usually there is an option of including your website url and when readers review the comments, if they find it helpful, they’ll click on the link and be directed back to your website. If your site has lots of relevant content, they’ll likely start visiting your site and possibly support you by purchasing your book or whatever product you sell. Once I started actually participating on other sites, I noticed my stats increased and some of those visitors converted into book sales.

If you review your site statistics, you’ll likely see that you have many regular and unique visitors. However, in my experience only a small portion of these visitors actually comment. You’ll find this to be very common across most blogs, websites, and social media. However, I want to impress upon you, how commenting can generate more traffic to your own site and possibly sell books.

Here’s a few reasons!

Commenting will allow you to:

- Establish yourself as an authority on your book or websites subject matter.

- Create backlinks to your own site that will help you rank better in search engines.

- It’s an extremely nice gesture that will eventually be reciprocated. *wink*

If you don’t have a website or book to promote, I can understand how leaving a comment may not be that important to you. But, as an author, blogger or website owner, leaving comments can be a great way to drive traffic to your own website as well as sell your products and establish yourself as an authority on a subject.

For example, if your book is on parenting, you can visit parenting sites and leave comments that will be helpful to that sites readers and also drive traffic back to your own website and products.

Now keep in mind, this doesn’t mean spamming websites with links to your blog. That would be the equivalent of calling someone during dinner to sell them life insurance. Instead, leave comments that establishes that you understand the subject and if they find your comment helpful they will seek out your book and/or website.

As a blog owner here’s what I do once I receive a new comment to my site:

- I acknowledge that I’ve received the comment by responding.

- If they are a new visitor, I visit their website as their content may be useful for me to add to my blog roll.

- If possible, I leave a comment on their site as a return favor for them supporting my site.

Let me also say that in no way am I implying that each person that visits your website will convert to a book sale. Not in the least! At most it will convert to a book sale and at the least they may add you on Facebook, follow you on Twitter, join your mailing list, support your blog, subscribe to your YouTube page or just provide the one page view. Whatever the case, by leaving comments on sites with already established audiences you will find your traffic increasing and eventually some of those hits will convert to book sales provided you have a great book or product to sell.

Do you see how this works? Tomorrow, we will discuss how commenting and interacting on social media can be helpful to drive traffic back to your website. In the meantime, do you comment on blogs? If so, why or why not? Have you found new readers as a result of commenting on other’s blogs and/or websites? As a blogger or website owner, how does commenting affect how you share content? Please share in the comment section below.

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Stefanie Newell

Writer at Write One Publications, Inc.

Stefanie Newell is an Atlanta-based writer and author of The Buzz: When celebrity gossip goes wrong….You can check out her musings on all things entertainment at TheMusicHotSpot.com and her The Life Of A Writer series on YouTube. http://youtube.com/TheLifeOfAWriter

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