Some people leave comments for different reasons. There are many benefits for such a small task, but I’d like to go a little deeper than that. In the simplest terms, there are only two types of people who leave comments.

Those who add something, and those who do not.

How do you know?

You may think your comments provide an extra insight or a quick thought, but in reality it likely doesn’t. I read every comment I get, and a trend I’m starting to notice is a slight pickup in relatively worthless comments.

Don’t get me wrong, if a (real) person takes time away from something better they could be doing and spends it on my site, I’m more than grateful, but this is about you. How your comments can benefit you.

What will happen if I delete your comment?

Will anything change? If the answer is no (or you are unsure), then you have left a worthless comment. Not lacking of any value to the author, necessarily, but lacking of value to you and the other commenters.

Every time I get a comment I imagine the thread without that comment. Every time I read a comment on another blog I imagine the same thing.

Imaging you have a friend that during a conversation (of multiple people) chimes in with something everyone either ignores, or it’s just what someone else said. I know people that do this, and I know everyone else does too.

Don’t be that person.

Comment Marketing

I’m aware of people that only comment for links, traffic and stuff like that. It’s a good method of building a name in your niche. Unfortunately, these people are usually the culprits of such comments. You’ll also find that the more popular a post, the more of these comments you’ll get.

This is something I should probably do more of, but if I read a post there are a few things I think about before leaving a comment.

1. After reading the comments, there is something I can add. Contributing to the discussion is important. Spammy comments get deleted in the way of a real discussion.
2. I disagree. I disagree with a lot of things, but if I read something and passionately oppose it, I’ll leave a comment.

Otherwise, I just don’t feel I’d be doing their comment section justice. Because of this, my comments aren’t deletable (it’s a word- I looked it up ).

You want people to read your comment. Let that be a reflection on you and your brand every time you leave a comment. You are representing a brand that will make a first impression on whoever reads it.

In the end, do yourself justice, and give the writer the respect you believe they deserve. That will provide you with more traffic from comments than 10 times the amount of worthless spam.

Today I’m going to focus on design related posts in the archives that most of you have never seen. Some of these articles were written when I had 20-50 readers and I think it’s a shame that these get buried in the archives. So, this week while I’m busy I’m linking off to my archives.

Some of these posts were written quite a while ago (one over a year ago) and could probably use a rewriting. It would be nice to refresh things with an extra year of experience and development of my personal style, plus all the nice formatting options at my fingertips now.

Considering Readability when Designing

Written over 370 days ago, this web typography article goes into detail about fonts and their uses on the web, and how you should consider them while in mockup stages in Photoshop (or app of your choice).

I’d love to do a “part 2″ of this article, maybe going more in depth and making it more concise. Either way, I like the article still, a year and a week later. It sucks when a post like that goes without comments for 11 months, too

Things to Include in Every Post

Going back to October 2007, this article is about stylings to include in your blog. It is more aimed at the content design than elements to include in your visual presentation. I would argue that content design can be just as important as “the rest of it”. On a site like this, I spend more time on content and let everything fall into place around it.

Other design specific articles from the past include:

• Simple Elements to Great Blog Design. Written only a few weeks ago, I think you should check it out.
• News Papers and Web Design. Great inspiration can come from newspapers. Locally, the National Post has great print design (can’t say the same for their site, so I won’t link it).
• CSS Snippets Every Style Sheet Needs. Some small bits of code I use in my everyday coding, even today.
• Best Fonts for Academic Papers. Typography for print on your everyday letter size papers, with the intent purpose of handing it in to be marked. Who needs Times anyway?

Also, the post “UBD Takes over the Make Money Online Niche” had a great discussion in the comments. Though it was more of a quick rant than anything design related (or useful, for that matter).

Instead of going into the archives for something like SEO or copywriting posts, I’ll post that refresh of the first article linked, Considering Readability when Designing.

This week I’m going to really busy, and the time I do get aside from priorities can not be spent on my blog. Clients paying for my time come in above readers, sorry. To keep something fresh up this week, I’m going to bring up some older posts a couple days this week.

Odds are you haven’t seen these posts, unless you’ve been reading for a while now. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but I’ve considerred quite a few things.

• First, not many people hit the archives like we would like them to. I have some stuff buried in there and the only way a new reader will find this content is if I point.
• It’s good content. There was a span in the summer when I was posting nearly everyday, if  not twice. It was quite an inspired time.
• I won’t just link off and leave you hanging. I’ll throw in some writer commentary free of charge and give you something to read, even if you don’t like archive diving.

So without further explanation, here is today’s batch. Today will focus on blog improvement.

101 Ways to Improve Your Blog

In this post I went through 101 (really 100 with one repeated) ways to improve your blog. Admittedly, I am no linkbait expert having limited social media exposure in my time, and though this failed in that regard, I think it was still a good post.

Even after looking back, there are some things in there I should start doing. You would think you could pop off 100 ways to do something different with relative ease, but that post took a while to write. You should try and see how it turns out. Who knows, you might get the big exposure I never got with that article.

12 Things to do to Your Brand New Blog

This was a post stemming from an email I received from a new blogger (didn’t last very long). I decided it made for a good post on how to get going in the right direction.

This is another article where I go and read back what I had written months ago and not only continue to agree, but make a personal note to put some of these things to action some day. Sometimes the solutions to your problems can be right under your nose.

Better Your Blog in a Week: #6

This was the next to last part in a 7 day series chronicling 7 ways you can improve your blog. The post, detailing tweaking your site’s design was the most popular of the series. Every now and then StumbleUpon throws some traffic my way, and this post still gets hits from SU today.

I’m considering doing another series of that nature, or at least another series of some sort. Whether it be a weekly thing with posts in between or a daily thing as in the past, it’s a place I’d like to revisit.

On Wednesday (I’m trying to lock into a Mon/Wed/Fri posting schedule, even though it is late Monday now) I’m going to venture design related things. These posts were never hugely popular but are useful and still get some nice Google attention.

There are certain parts of our respective languages we enjoy more than others. Personally I enjoy comparing things to provide a broader scope of understanding for the reader. This post poses a question to you (the reader), regarding my writing style. Should I tone down the comparisons?

In the past I would never have doubted my personal style on my personal blog, but in the end I don’t want to confuse anyone by mixing analogies trying to get my idea across. The act of comparing one thing to an everyday, simple thing will never stop for me, but I want to find the limit.

What Happens with no Restraint

In an article a couple days ago, I wrote what I thought was a great piece of work. Titled, “Simple Elements to Great Blog Design” the article as a whole was overlooked. A couple days later a new commenter, Matt, started the comments by saying this (it was a nice long comment, and I’m only looking for the one piece):

…although you mixed in a lot of metaphors in one post which was a bit annoying.

- Matt (March 8th, 2008)

To be fair, there over seven or eight different comparisons in that article, excluding winding adjectives.

Most of them really help to push my point across the border into the country that is your brain. Some of them were shots at humour, but still function as point-pushers. So, now as someone that reads or cares, should I tone down the metaphors?

I’m not saying I’ll change anything regarding the way I write, but I’ll reconsider letting about ten of them loose in one article next time.