Why Do Bloggers Edit or Delete Comments?

Smart marketers and bloggers watch for articles and blog entries that use their keywords so they can read the content and leave comments. It’s a great way to connect and network in the blogosphere/Internetsphere.

But they also make a mistake. No question — participating the blogosphere helps people and their businesses… when done right. If you see a blog post for a topic on which you’re an expert, what do you do?

Many often write something along the lines of “Check my article on this topic at … link,” “Sign up for a free course on this topic at … link” and so on.  Most — if not all — blogs have a URL in their comment forms. Put your URL there and provide a comment on the entry instead rather than making it about you or your business unless the entry insulted or commented on your business.

The blogosphere prefers subtle to blatant. Entering your URL to your article, tutorial, blog, web site is enough. Let your comment do the showing. Readers/bloggers will click on your URL if they like what you had to say. When someone simply points out their article or site — bloggers are less likely to click on it because it’s blatant self-promotion.

Most of you know how bloggers feel about self-promotion. Some company blogs got in trouble for writing a marketing-style blog instead of an informative one. This is just one of those unwritten rules.

I ran into a similar incident at Remarkablogger where I left a comment that made no sense. I don’t know what I was thinking when I wrote it.

Essentially, I was trying to explain that I answered the question in a months-old post but thought adding a trackback to the post would be “wrong” because my entry came long before this entry. This is how I explained it:

I usually don’t like to link to my stuff in comments because I feel that it’s “wrong.” I usually rely on trackback… but since this post is from May — I don’t think it’d be right to add a trackback.

Remarkablogger’s Michael wrote a nice response:

Thanks for clearing that up, Meryl. Makes perfect sense, now. If you are adding value to the discussion, I don’t mind if you link to your own posts in comments. I applaud your higher-than-average ethics on the matter, but you are welcome to link out.

I forgot to add the trackback until now. Anyway, this is an extreme case and if given the opportunity, I would respond differently as I cringe in re-reading my old comment. Blogs succeed because they’re about providing people with honest and real content — not phony or self-promotion.