One of the things I have always done is to read and comment on blogs I find worthwhile. The main reason I do this is to learn. Another advantages include growing a network of like minded people (that grow from recognizing you commenting on their blog or blogs they read and then some start to read your blog…). And that growing your following can result in more links to your site and better search rankings.

These are my comments sparked by an post with some good ideas on some good blogging practices. They are edited and extended from the comment left on the blog.

Great thoughts.

Give your readers what they want: so important and yes to some extent people think of this, but that idea should get more attention from most bloggers.

Length of posts; as you say make them appropriate. Sometimes what you have to share is best captured in a long post. Sometimes a short post is best. Trying to jam a post into a specific format/length is a recipe for failure.

I do think the long, detailed posts are valuable and if you are never doing that there is likely some value in seeing if some of what you have to say can be expressed well in a long post.

I do have comments I leave spark me to write longer posts on my own blogs. I also started a management blog on blogspot (over 10 years ago) and when I created my own domain (also over 10 years ago) I left it there (urls should live forever).

A few years later I started to use that blog to republish comments I thought were worth keeping (one of the things I do is link to my previous content and trying to find some comment I want to reference is really hard, by collecting comments I think I might want to reference on that blog I can actually find them again). I often edit these a bit and add some links (which I often am prevented from including even when they would be really useful).

I was adding this to the related links that follow – Build Your Online Presence (another post that started as a comment). And this shows another reason to republish your comments that are worth keeping. The original article link is gone. I always include a link to the post I commented on; it is amazing how many are broken a few years later (lots of people break a basic web usability and wise SEO practice and break their urls).

An illustration of why it is in your interests to have urls live forever. Last year I did posts on my most popular posts on many of my blogs (based on views in 2014). A fairly typical example is from my Curious Cat Comments blog. The most popular posts by year 2014-6 (the most recent year does have an advantage as lots of regular readers read each new post); 2013-1; 2010-1; 2009-1; 2008-1; 2007-1; 2006-2. This one actually was more heavily weighted to recent post than most of my blogs. I just checked it for this year and 2 posts from 2007 and 1 post from 2008 that were not in the top last year are all in the top 6 this year (and the one from 2008 last year is also repeated again).

Related: Blog commenting options – Make Your Blog Welcoming – Don’t Use Short URL Services