As we all know running a blog is a big commitment and does take a lot of time and work in the beginning. You must keep your blog current otherwise people's interest in your blog starts to die. Basically, you have to go out and promote, drive traffic from relevant sites, participate with people on social media. Here are some things you should NOT be doing because you will annoy the living crap out of serious bloggers or people in your blogosphere.
Spam commenting annoys bloggers
Seems pretty relevant doesn't it. Just spamming people's blogs with “Nice Post”, “I totally agree”, “well said”. Either using Scrapebox to harvest as many blogs as you can do a major spam blast isn't going to work you any magic in your blog's niche either. You will be better off adding value and showing that you are somewhat educated on the subject. Try to be personal starting with “Hey Garen, your comment here”. I have found the more personal you are with people the easier it is to build relationships.
Open ended business proposals – Imagine you have taken 2-3 years developing a lot of content on your blog, have 1,000's of RSS subscribers, huge mailing list, and a massive following or liking on Facebook. Then old “Billy The Nuisance” comes along and just wants you to help his new blog. Such as – hey mention me in your mailing list, link to me in the footer, or hey look at this [LINK DROP] on your Facebook fanpage. What a good way to get someone to ignore you and chances are your name/brand will travel quickly with dirt. No one really likes to just hand out BIG favors for their handwork to complete strangers they don't even know.
Crappy guest posting really annoys bloggers
Ok taking the time to get a guest post is great, but once you get someone to accept it don't just write a piece of crap article; that it is so boring or could easily be found rehashed a thousand times on Ezinearticles.com. Really, does that add any value to their blog, no! I have made this mistake myself, so don't be like me. Also, proof read your guest post and make sure they make sense. I am not saying your have to have to be an excellent writer. I am sure there are grammar errors on sites I run and even this guest blog post.
Not following up on guest post – So you have taken the time to write this great post. Ok, it's not just great it's badass, probably 20X better than the content on your blog. People have ideas once they read it and leave comments. Guess what you ignore them never respond to them and people just lose interest in your blog from that post. Not to mention you are killing your network of bloggers that could become future guest blog post, share your content, or business partners later on down the road. From a PR standpoint, it just looks like you really don't really care what other people have to say. You don't want to send the message saying, “Your opinion means nothing to me.”
Adding them to email list – It's fine if someone opt-ins because they care what you have to say and want to join your mailing list. Aweber does have a feature that you can add people in manually. DO NOT ABUSE this feature. In fact, in some cases you get reported enough times by people complaining about unsolicited emails then chances are your account will get banned.
Cold Emailing Bloggers Asking For Favors
There are loads of tutorials out there telling you that you can build links by emailing influential bloggers and asking them for links. They call it the skyscraper technique and I for one don't like it. When those emails come into my inbox the quickly go to the spam box. I mean why should I do a favor for you when I don't know you and you haven't even shared one of my blog posts in a Tweet!
Every now and then I will use this tactic that Ms. Ileane shares in this video: How to Set Up a Canned Response in Gmail
All and all when you approach people online with your ventures and everything your mindset should be “what can I do for you”, rather than “here is what you can do for me.” Just remember, be respectful, build relationships, learn from each other, and help one another. People have blogging so wrong sometimes and don't even understand that what they are doing could be considered annoying.
Nice Post : Totally Agree and finally well said…. Sorry for annoying you..
I think each and every sentence you wrote is correct. If any comments to my comes blog as : thanks for great post, I enjoyed a lot, great share : I just add them to my cloudflares blacklist.. That’s all.
” Not following up on guest post ” : This was my mistake I committed. My first guest post was for techwalls, and in that post I never replied to anyone.
sorry the comment at the bottom was intended for you 🙂 To much caffeine!
Whatever it may, I like the way you comment. Thanks for your insight comment on my blog.
@Garen, I’m not annoyed easily by bloggers or blogcomments. Maybe the really obvious and ridiculous spam does annoy me a bit, because of all the extra work to clean it up.
@Vivek, great last post, it helped me a bit. Thanks
Out of the ones you mentioned, the spam comments and a link in the comment is the worst offender. Don’t you just hate these people, where do they come from. Adding manually to Facebook groups is another one and then you have your inbox flooded with crap messages.
Yes I love the comments check out my new online marketing eBook that will make you 1,000’s in a single second.
Well said! 😛
I have just recently started an SEO blog in which i post two to three times a week but also ask for guest authors. I’m not sure if its because my site is only 3 months old but all i seem to recieve so far is very low quality, rehashed, wishy-washy, badly written, badly spelt articles that have obviously only been written for a the link! I will not publish these….ever. How many times have i been submitted a “quality guest post” describing the best way to structure a title tag? Too many!!
Also, i provide social sharing options and i EXPECT the authors to promote their posts via social media channels for BOTH our benefits, yet so many dont seem to do this? Why not??
Yeah pretty much basic knowledge explaining how backlinks, anchor text, ect. work. Anyone with any kind of fundamental knowledge would already know that. Plus, it adds to no value whatsoever to your blog, other than giving someone a link to there site. It’s a two way street you help me and I will help you.
This days my site is getting more than spam comment and don’t understand why peoples are writing spam comments. Also getting many spam emails with normal request that going to my spam mail box.
Great and valuable post Arnold.
Yes, it goes with the territory the more popular you get on the Internet the more spam you get.
I hate it when people write something short “nice post” – it shows that they just can’t be bothered to add real value to the discussion.
Lately I have to deal with about 500 spam-bot comments that drove me mad…
Anyhow I was even more honest with my readers and blogged a piece about what spam comments did to me in the past – so they know why there was hardly any comments on my blog…
Guest posting is one of the best and most effective link building strategies present now not only for bloggers but also for almost all who want to build links.
And it`s not good to talk only for guest post. Building relation with blogger owners will help in many ways.
BTW excellent post thank you.
~@khajamoin1
Yes also asking people that left good quality comments on your guest post for a RT, say to my site blogsetupguide.com is a good way to improve your social networking on Twitter. Don’t have a lot of experience on Twitter but have found that writing good post and just asking for RT seems to be effective.
Had a chat about this with a fellow blogger the other day, what really annoys him are guest post emails that are quite obviously spam and after reading a few of these I can see his point. These generic emails, probably written/generated using a piece of software and then probably sent out to a multiple number of blogs. This guest blogger probably did not even read the blog, and how someone like this expects to get a favorable response in return is beyond me!
Spam comments are pretty annoying too, although can be easily dealt with by adding a Captcha (or similar) plugin.
Yeah, the emails that are probably generic and just switched out based on your email. I have found that if you take the time to go through there blog and found out something that isn’t already there you will have a better chance of getting the opportunity rather than sending out 1.000’s of spam emails.
Hey Mike,
I really like your list of 20 post ideas. Thanks!!!
I agree, annoying users is the worst thing you can do. It’s the first step for getting them out of your list and they will burn-out fast. I also agree with crappy guest posts. You should take care when selecting the right stuff, better to not get everything from guest posters but filter and put a few minimum requirements. Thanks.
Not to mention taking it one step further and guest post that you do get, and people that leave quality comments; take a second to hop over to there blog and leave them a good comment too.
Thanks to akismet I don’t have a great deal of spam to check for but the blogger blog receives spam comments in tonnes and it wastes a lot of time. Many bloggers are making guest posting guidelines stricter just because of the fact that those guys who posted the content do not reply to a single comment.
such a nice post, i have a problem, when some one comment on my blog, the comment is gone in spam. what should i do
check your spam comments if I am understanding this comment correctly?
Uninstall Akismet, or whatever other anti-spam blog plugin you are using on your blog.
I have heard a couple of bloggers doing this and it not being a problem. (Note you may want to include the box to check you are human)
haha you didn’t annoy me.
Yes, I always try to follow up to each comment unless its only purpose is to get a backlink from the site owners blog. I haven’t ever ignored comments on guest post, but we all know the ones that are there for no purpose at all 🙂
Oh people adding me to their mailing list without my permission is currently my biggest pet hate. Not only is it rather ‘forward’ of you to think I’d want to join your list but pretty much all of them have been absolute rubbish! 🙂
Yep, I get a number of those and they are always “easy riches”, which crack me up because I got a lot of experience with IM/SEO and half the crap they are trying to sell me to make twenty dollars through clickbank is quite basic.
Also, I RT your “How the Blogosphere Can Help Your SEO Efforts” on my Twitter 🙂
Garen
Hi, I have to agree with the SPAM most annoying thing ever when you have a blog. I personally just delete it before i’ve finished reading. It tends to be so obvious. Nothing personal in the message and nothing related to your post. The other thing that annoys me is as a commentator leaving a comment and getting no reply. I understand that not everyone will get a reply, but if the comments listed under a blog have no replies at all it just appears the writer is not interested in his or hers readers.
Yeah spam commenting has become so generic now thanks to scrapebox. For instance, “This was a great post, I bookmarked it for my sister.
Yeah it helps to respond to your readers….lol. Otherwise just write a book.
Hi I enjoyed reading this. Sounds like imspamming now. Better change my tone. All the points were true. The thing that scares me now though is you mentioned scraping. I hope it doesn’t become a lucrative business for people doing this to other peoples sites. To get rid of there opposition in there area of the market.
Great read thanks lee
I have heard that Google is going through desperate measures to making scraping pointless. I sure hope so!
People generally have a hard time communicating on the Internet and following certain rules of good behavior when talking to others. I hate spam comments and its a good thing that there a lot of software services to get rid of them!
Today must be national SPAM day. Funny I find this post about being annoying and I had a record number of SPAM comments today.
Nice write up!!
Awesome post and I think every genuine blogger here really feel for what you are saying and thinking “that is soooo true!”. For me the worst of the worst was spammy comment, you really wonder where the hell they come from. I heard of this spam filter called askimet by Pat Flynn and it is amazing! Everyone who have some problem with spammy email on their wordpress blog should install this plugin.
Tim
Scrapebox, ScrapeJet, ect. Auto programs where they load up phony comments and scrape blogs with certain strings to get a backlink. They auto rotate there email, names, ect.
To be candid, i hate those spam comments and it drive me crazy at times because it will be coming in frequently. Thanks for sharing
Hi Garen,
I don’t get annoyed or frustrated when things like that happen to me, at least not anymore. I used to get a little sad, and then I started to tell myself that I was naive. But, what you’ve described happens all the time, and a lot of people are doing it. For instance, if you send guest posts, I believe that one of the most important part of a guest post is the follow up.
Yeah, you learn to take the good with the bad. I used to get so pissed when people would spam, but an old friend reminded me that you just made it man relax :). Kind of like being a celebrity (in it’s own way).
You are so correct when you state right at the beginning, that you must go out and promote your post. Lots of people don’t understand that. It works. And if you guest post, like you said, make it a quality post and follow up on the comments, otherwise you are making yourself and the owner of the blog look bad. You would, in that case, be totally defeating the whole purpose of guest posting! And try to leave quality comments and act like you’ve read the post! LOL
Thanks!
~ Jupiter Jim
Yeah I have found that using the authors name like Hi Garen, and then your comment helps a lot.
Not only crappy guest posts don’t make a good impression for the writer, but it might be a waste of time too. Just because you convince someone to publish your article, it doesn’t mean he/she won’t change her mind after reading it.
Not to mention people that might read it before it gets deleted and say, “wow this person has no creditability”.
That’s right, Garen. Bottom of line, accepting guest posting has its risk.
Lolzz if there’s one thing I hate highest is to login to my dashboard only to see 250 spam comments! Damn!!! I usually just empty the spam, I don’t even take time to moderate, it pains me alot…
Not to mention the mass emails from “real” seo companies that can get you first page Google for any keyword. Funny because I am already there so maybe they should stop sending these auto messages and looking like fools. Maybe I should start a site on automated spammers…lol.
Hello Garen,
I really can relate on spam comments. It makes my head blowup when i’m cleaning up my sites. Your post is a nice heads-up for those bloggers try to maintain there sites spam free. Thank you. 🙂
Hi Garen,
Getting crap comments is the main thing which annoys me and I think also to most of the bloggers. I also created a comment policy and even added a link for it in comments field. But spammers and link promoters don’t even care to read it.
My site also started to get many guest posts after the latest PR update in which 40% of the guest posts are just crap or copied from others. This makes me feel to stop accepting guest posts on my blog.
Anyways, thanks for the points Garen. 🙂
Have you considered installing a rating system or anything? On comments I have found that people will complain 100 times before one person says something nice. I would drop by your site and leave some of my knowledge on tech stuff, but I am using a Blackberry from 2009 because I dropped my phone in the pool…lol
Yes, I agree I have found that leaving it open ended is a great way to improve the quality of comments that you get.
i am little bit doubtful for your comments.
This is so very true! Those people who do spam commenting, don’t they know that they are wasting our time and their time since their comments will be immediately deleted?
Also, make sure if you have loads of comments that you use a broken link checker which can kill your SEO if you have lots of them on your blog.
i am annoyed by spam comments only rest of the things are not happening with me right now.
So true. Some people are in the haste of promoting their blog and they end up in commenting something most probably a mere thanks or well-written, etc. These shouldn’t be encouraged. Each and every blog should have a good comment policy. The defend against should be to avoid spams and one should ensure that the counter-measures are not hindering the genuine ones from commenting 🙂
Put right below or above the submit button. “If you add no value to this post I will remove it”
I think those that annoy me most are the ones who don’t understand the concept of human capabilities. Some people don’t understand that one person can only do so many things at once – asking over and over and over rarely changes my answers 😛 .
Spam really used to tick me off, so I invested some time in making it so I never have to deal with spam comments. Most of them never even see my eyes – they go right to the trash. 🙂
dang….that’s why my comments never get accepted from your blog (kidding)
Have you seen some guest blogging requests, they are worse than spam with mostly done by fake profiles. Nowadays, you have check whether someone is real or fake while guest blogging
one person copied and pasted an article I write and sent it to me…lol.
Spot on Garen. I have actually fallen into a few of these mistakes myself in a couple of my websites for one reason or the other but mostly “not following up on guest posts”. I tell ya, it makes the world difference when you follow-up.
As for spammers, I have completely shutdown one of my sites because of that. Established a good active forum with pageviews close to ~6k/day, left overseas on vacation with a very limited access to Internet, came back 30 days later to see posts and comments allover the forum with backlinks to inappropriate explicit materials. The site was beyond repair and even the backup would still need to be cleaned up .. So, I just decided to shut the site down.
So, a piece of advice to all bloggers and web admins out there, when you establish a website, make sure you stay on top of it.. I learned my lesson the hard way.
They probably used Xrummer or something and your site got on multiple list which left you wide open for spam. I talked to a SEO company several months ago and I asked them how they build backlinks, they told me Scrapebox, Xrummer, and Bookmark Demon (or something). All blackhat tools.
I told them you are going to have a ton of people mad at you when you play stupid and there rankings are gone. They told told me, “they won’t know what we did”.
I told them I run a SEO company….they hung up on me.
LOL.. That’s funny.. Yea, I heard about Scrapebox. Scary tool man and hard to track the spammers. That’s why I like WordPress, there are plugins that can tremendously help fight these spammers, that’s what I use now on all my sites.
There is nothing worse than being added to an email list you didn’t sing up for.
Definitely agree with these as being HUGE no-nos…
Thanks!
Ryan H.
Even worse when they sell your email to dirty marketers!
Haha! Ezinearticles. I used to work for someone who wanted me to just find posts there and recycle them. Suffice to say I didn’t learn anything during that time. Now I’m relearning SEO all over again.
As for spam comments, while I do get annoyed, it’s not THAT annoying for me. 😉
SEOmoz is pretty much what I would follow. There are some other good ones out there, but that is what I use.
Honestly I really don’t understand why people will waste their time to spam a blog or just post a two word comment. Really how does that help their blogs?
A two word or one sentence post deprives the commentator of the possible 95% benefits of blog commenting.
I don’t often comment on blogs not because I don’t want to. It’s usually because I either don’t have time to read the post word for word in other to make a useful comment, I read the post but couldn’t spare the time to comment or because I have nothing really useful to add.
I wish I comment more on blogs though. From the few comments I have left here and there I get really some continuous traffic from them. Actually I am even finding that commenting brings me more regular traffic than guest posting.
I had only left about 2 or 3 comments on hotblogtips when the blog became one of my top 3 traffic referrals.
Blog commenting is really great. I wish people will use it better they’ll really see great results. Usually I get noticed by a blogger with my first comment on the blog so commenting has been my quickest way to cultivating relationship with bloggers.
Now links from blog comments don’t even interest me anymore. I usually don’t bother making use of KeywordLuv plugin if it’s available on blogs because the greatest benefits blog commenting offers are:
Exposure to your new content (I think all blogs should use the CommentLuv plugin).
Networking with Blog owners.
Traffic.
So people who spam are really just wasting their time. They get no benefit from doing so except one or two curiosity clicks that will most likely increase their bounce rate.
These are very obvious points on what annoys bloggers but it’s good for us to be reminded of good etiquette once a while.
Mostly, because people are just lazy and don’t really want to put in the work to establish a blog, or possibly enticed by the whole “make money online” thing which has been so blown out of proportion. eBook for 9.99 promising 6 figure income, work 1 hour a month and make 50k, ect.
Thanks for your comment Karo and I will be sure to stop by your blog tomorrow and leave a comment for you shortly. Midnight here 🙂
I think most of the email system gives an option to add email address manually and I have seen few people misusing that feature. These should be handled carefully as it can get the account banned and create a wrong impression on the readers…
Not to mention your hosting provider could suspend you for sending out 1,000 emails and hour.
Nowadays every person thinks that he or she can write just because they managed to get a 4 out of 5 marks in the school essays. However they do not know how irritating there article and post can be. Some would just google up certain topics, merge them all and send it forward to be posted in blogs. Reading these posts can annoy any blogger.
That and your bounce rate is horrible because the writing doesn’t flow.
Proof reading of the article is very necessary as grammatical mistakes do not pay good impression. Spamming activities are not appreciable.
Galen, I can’t anything about commenting, but I have seen some bloggers wasting their time on writing crappy guest posts, but the interesting thing is that the bloggers are accepting it just to keep their blog update. Crappy guest posts not only annoys the readers, but It also effects the SERP rankings.
Yeah would be better off just submitting to article directories or buying a directory link from an authority site which would help more than a crappy guest post.
Garen, I have been aware of this “community” of bloggers for just the past few months. I’ve been learning a lot about writing, maintaining a blog for my very distinct niche, and all the successful tactics that go along with it. One thing that’s curious that’s been happening to me a lot is people email me links to their articles and want me to write about them. Why would I do that? Their articles have nothing to do with my clients, who are financial advisors. So, I “get” your angst. Thanks for the great info, Suzanne
Spam comments are the worse and useless time. I really hate the ones you outlined, great post.
The do not care they wasting their time. I usually delete comments that look like spam.
Thanks 🙂
Well clearly they want a link from your site. But they are going about it the wrong way. Maybe they should actually establish a business network with you rather than asking for freebies. Tell them to provide you with something of value.
A blogger can also get irritated if the guest blogger asks him to post an article that has lots of spelling mistakes, weak vocablury and improper sentence formation. Grammatical errors also make the blogger impatient and go out of control with anger.
Yep, it’s always good to proof read or at least make an effort.
Wonderful article. I fully enjoyed while I am reading this article. It prevent the spamming comment on the blog. Some people want to follow up to each comment and their only purpose is to a backlink from the site owner. Your article really change my comment style. Good post, thanks for sharing.
I’m used to it now, spammers are intelligent creatures they find out some or the other source to spam. You provided awesome post and I think every genuine blogger here really feel for what you are saying and think. For me the worst of the worst was spammy comment, you really wonder where the hell they come from.
I usually put a lot of soul and hard-work in my projects, therefore I have high standards for guest posts. Unfortunately, many new bloggers forget about their responsibilities and they only think about the quality backlink from an authority site. On one hand I can understand their eagerness, but I cannot cope with their superficiality.
Yeah a number of times I have done a guest post because from a SEO standpoint my comp would kill for a link from that site. I always offer to redo guest post if they think it’s horrible.
i get a lot of that that you mentioned about people just dropping links on your site can get very annoying
Yep, watch out for the prescription pills link drops. If it goes unnoticed for awhile Google will really come down on you hard for that.
Great post – And yes, I do agree… The top contender on most webmasters hit-list is spam, Web spam, email spam, etc. And it doesn’t seem to stop.
Yep, its a catch 22 you make a site that people like; you get spammed.
The part that annoys me most times is where guest posters don’t follow up on comments like seriously that stuff bores me. And also the spamming issue, imagine i got upto 50 spam comments all from one guy. Thanks to Akismet though it never made it to my blog.
Anyways Nice Post Garen
Yes, I recall a post sometime ago about someone doing guest post and just arguing with everyone that commented. What a great way to make new friends!
Hi Garen,
“Annoy Bloggers” – great title bro.
I do agree that crappy Guest Blogs and Cooments annoy a blog but it is part of life and any blogger can restrict these activities upto a level by using some plugins and setting Guest Post and Comment Guidelines.
Yeah, ask what their site/blog needs rather than want you want to write about.
From my perspective people should’t get annoyed when it comes to spammers and generally rude people. Just ignore/remove them.
Though I sometimes get very frustrated myself when some random people find the nerve to DEMAND help and attention from me. It doesn’t even matter if I offer some services in exchange for a certain price, I had a lot of people contacting me and they demanded a explanation on how exactly I do certain things. While sometimes I do rage…most of the times I just ignore them and move along.
I love this post title! I am definitely into doing stuff that catches people’s attention. I agree with every one of your points! These all aggravate me as well!
Hi Garen,
Thanks and I hope somebody can benefit from your inspiring post.
I just launched my site 1 week ago, and already there are 33 comment spam using robot (maybe Scrapebox user). At first this really annoying me, but thanks to ‘comment moderation setting’, so I can choose wheter the comments is spam or not.
To everyone, try to setting your blog with ‘moderation comment’ setting. This really saves your time, so you don’t have to remove it one by one.
Yeah use the one here at BasicBlogTips.com. The one where you have click the box to show you are not a spammer.
Nail on the head with the comment spam Garen!
I got so bloody sick of it I made a page just for the spammers, I followed in the footsteps of Linda Grace who has a page just for that kind of thing.
Funny thing is, she gets some good comments there. lol
THANK YOU… the guest post requests, followed by ridiculous submissions are driving me up the wall!
I think commenting is the most important part of communication each other. A better comment make a man perfect for his blog. A spammer can’t work so long, so he may drop down and his blog also be traffic less. I usually try to put full of my soul and hard work to make good one.
Hello Garen
Ya spams are the thing which every blogger hate too much.I was totally get distracted in initial days of blogging because of these spams.The first work which I did was to delete all the spams. Thanks for the option provided by WordPress for helping me out from these cheap spams.Thanks fro this nice post .
I don’t even get mad anymore, and that’s because when you get in the range of 15+ years in blogging, you’ve seen it all. I either don’t approve the comment, remove the ones that don’t meet my rules, and emails… well, I don’t reply, even if they harangue me because I didn’t reply.
People do what they want, when they want, and for those who are serious, they’ll figure out eventually where they’ve crossed the line.