Tuesday, November 3, 2015

Behind the Joys of Blog Hopping

When I’m not writing articles, I blog hop. I go to different blogs and leave a comment on interesting posts. Sometimes it’s a way of initiating relationship between bloggers that can be very beneficial especially when they’ll become a follower of each other’s weblog. Blog hopping also enables me to understand the industry better. It exposes me to more ideas and helps me realize the path I’m pursuing. Back reading their posts even makes me more conscious of how korni my other posts can be.

Blog hop or blog hopping works by visiting a blog that has the same niche with yours. If your blog is about fashion or beauty, you search for similar sites and leave a relevant comment together with your own link.

I’ve done this in my early blogging days to discover and follow inspirational or entertaining blogs and to also introduce my blog to my fellow Filipino bloggers. I’m happy to say that some of them have followed me back. However, I’ve stopped leaving my link because it might get spammy and it can hurt the overall health of my blog instead of benefiting from it. I believe that there’s an unspoken rule regarding the proper way of leaving comments in other websites. I honestly don’t know the exact rule, only a wild guess that it is not advisable to just leave your plain URL or URL hyperlink below the comment. It’s very tempting but who knows if it could backfire someday. There is a right and obvious place for our links and there's even a dedicated textbox for that.

Disadvantage of Blog Hopping

  1. There’s no real interaction. Some just leave comments deprived of real value. If you are a blogger, you’ll learn to discern which comment is genuine, rushed or fake. For the love I have in my e-journal, I'd rather choose to stop exchanging comment or reduce the frequency of my comments to other blogs than to receive a message from them that feels like a spam.
  2. A messy page. Some of  us are blinded with having a lot of comments in our entries and we even allow those generated or unrelated comments to appear. But doing so will make your future reader, your real target audience, suffer. Why would a visitor linger long if the comments are like trash? Will it help them in their decision making? Does it adds value to the information they're seeking in the net? Or at least entertain them? Visually, it doesn’t add up in the aesthetics of your site. There is no balance between the real worth of your article versus the loads of comments you received.
  3. Tricky and time consuming. It’s very artificial and it’s “too much” to leave your link in every page you’ve commented. Even too much of a good thing is a bad thing. Practice moderation. Choose only the blogs and a particular post where it is best to share your comment and link.

This is just one of the many ways to gain free traffic. So use your time wisely! Focusing only in the scheme of blog hopping might reduce your time on other important things you should be prioritizing more.


Do you practice blog hopping? Do share your experience and observations.


2 comments:

  1. I blog hop all the time! But there are times na lazy ako magcomment lalo na kapag hindi ako syado makarelate sa post.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Saka lang ako nagbablog hop if naaalala ko. Minsan pag hindi ako makarelate sa current post nangangalkal na lang din ;)

      Delete

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