There is a lot of unseen power in conversational blogging. 90% of the help my readers receive are in my comments. I do have one certainty in my blogging which is something that will never change, a strong sense of blogging ethics and business integrity. I am into good seo practice but it takes a backseat to my real purpose. I take pride in replying to each and every comment on my site. This blog is also a full Do-Follow blog.

I choose not to use a plugin that will make a commenter have to leave a certain amount of comments to receive link love from me. Some Do-Follow blogs employ this criteria to receive link love, I don’t. If a new commenter comes here, I check the source of this person by looking at the site it comes from. It takes more effort to do it this way, and I like to prevent my spam in this manner.

Do you reply to every comment your readers leave? If I leave what I consider a viable comment on someone’s post and they don’t reply to it, I feel like they might consider it irrelevant and often I don’t feel very welcome at their blog. Some people only respond to a small percentage of their commentators and just leave the others like they are less important. The blogs I like most are the one’s that give me the time of day with a simple reply!

I love this conversational approach to my blog and I think it has gained me lots of readers who come back regularly. Also, most of these people have become friends, which is the most important idea of all. Readers notice blogs who don’t reply and these blogs over time develop reputations for not caring. If you blog only to make money, then you are the festering greed that drives the bigger blogs.

Unfortunately, Google heavily perpetuates greed by making the desire to to link to big blogs so important. They recommend only linking to blogs who have page rank and that makes me sick to my stomach. That is how it is.

My good friend, the Brown Baron left me a comment on my post Reality Niche This which sums up my feeling about blogging in an absolute way. The comment was very memorable and perfectly written:

 

Every comment, every link, is a potential bridge between two people, two countries, and two souls. No matter where you are in the world, or what your culture is, a single link or comment can seal a friendship.

Blogging is my way of finding my lost relatives, that’s you guys. Anything after that is gravy.
Thanks Bobby, I loved this post.

My good friend Aaron from Aaron Cook Dot Com left this amazing comment recently on my post about blogging ethics:

Bobby said, “I tend to be the type of blogger who freely shares his feelings without hesitation and I will always do that whether it’s good for my popularity or not.”

Aaron says: Bobby, I believe that’s precisely the way it should be. We’re bloggers, not politicians! And we, as humans, should ALWAYS be willing to share our feelings WITHOUT worrying about whether or not they are popular. Otherwise, what the hell good is having feelings and opinions anyway!

Personally, I believe this idea is by far more important than anything else in blogging! As always, if you leave a comment, I will answer it. It is the force which drives my writing.

Check out BrownBaron’s post, Brown Batch #23: Link Love Goodness

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