Darnell Jackson of YourOnlineBiz recently announced the champion of The Second Annual International Blogger Championship Tournament (IBCT).
The International Blogger Championship Tournament is all about learning from the best of the best. It was created in 2012 to motivate people to learn about blogging in a brand new way that I call competitive comparative analysis.
The IBCT started with what Darnell felt were the top 128 blogs. He reduced that to 64 and then put them head to head in a tournament format. All of us who blog seek out the very best bloggers to see how they have accomplished what we hope to do.
Lists like IBCT are an excellent way to find the very best quality bloggers.
See the Top 128 IBCT Blogs and Bloggers here.
These are the bloggers you will want to follow on Twitter, connect with on LinkedIn and Google Plus, collaborate with and among whom you will find the mentors most useful to you.
I encourage you to seek out these top bloggers. They have invested 4-5+ years of their lives in what they’ve accomplished. You WILL learn much from them.
Many bloggers we have collaborated with for years were involved. We were first up against Ana Hoffman’s excellent TrafficGenerationCafe. We collaborate with and learn much from Ana.
In the second round, we were up against our good friend Kiesha Easley’s WeBlogBetter. Kiesha, Bryan Hollis of BlogInteract, and I are working on a major Joint Venture to roll out local geo-targeted group blogs later this year.
Ileane Smith of BasicBlogTips competed against her friend DiTesco’s iBlogZone in the regional finals. Both Ileane and DiTesco are long time collaborators and have extremely loyal and dedicated followings.
GrowMap was up against DiTesco in the quarter finals having edged out Social Media Examiner in the regional finals. There was no predicting who might edge out the other as the results are based on comments and shares by supporters.
From the start we all encouraged our friends, readers, and followers to feel free to vote their hearts with no hard feelings. We are all more about collaboration than competition. I am just as happy to have you vote for any of these fine blogs as mine because we are ALL winners due to working together.
In the finals GrowMap was up against Pat Flynn’s fine SmartPassiveIncome. While I have shared his content, we have not yet collaborated. Hopefully we will this year.
In the end, GrowMap’s supporters swayed the results in our favor, and GrowMap was crowned Champion of the 2nd Annual International Blogger Championship.
I share these results with you to show you examples of bloggers who stayed the course. They collaborate and promote each other selfishly. They are your role models.
I hope that you will check out the full list of 128 blogs. Select those that most fit your own goals and whose content appeals to you.
Darnell makes that easier through his interview series. Here are a few of his latest interviews with top bloggers:
- What I learned from Ari Herzog – Q&A with the founder of AriHerzog.com
- What I learned from James Chartrand – Q&A with the founder of Men with Pens
- What I learned from the Elite Eight bloggers of the #IBCT
- What I learned from Adrienne Smith – Q&A with the founder of AdrienneSmith.net
See all the Blogger Interviews here.
I have learned it is better to connect with a few deeply than try to keep up with many.
Choose several to maybe half a dozen of these blogs.
Subscribe to their content. Interact in their comments. Share their content on social networks. You and your blog will be better for the experience.
Special thanks to Adrienne of AdrienneSmith.net and all the others
who took time out of their busy days to support GrowMap.What Darnell did is a LOT of work. I commend him for
supporting all these blogs and the bloggers who in
turn supported his IBCT and each other.Want even more top bloggers to follow?
Use Topsy to find our collaborators.
Make More Money with The Affiliates Guide to Blog Commenting for Traffic and Leads
Affiliate Marketer John Gibb
This is a guest post by John Gibb, a top affiliate in the health industry and blog commenting enthusiast. Be sure to check out his free super affiliate handbook at the end of this post.
Are you a blogger or affiliate marketer looking to discover how to generate traffic and leads doing simple things such as asking and answering questions on other people’s sites?
Blog Commenting to Increase Affiliate Income
There’s a right and a wrong way of doing that. Once you understand how to blog comment correctly, you’ll start getting results (e.g. traffic and leads). All that counts is the present moment. Forget everything you’ve been taught about this method, and focus on what you’re reading here.
I’m not saying to take everything I say lightly – in fact – compare what you already know about affiliate marketing and blog commenting in general with the new things you’ll be hearing today.
You’ll make your own judgements afterward.
A glimpse into the life of a Blog Commentator…
There is value in each of us that we’d like to share with others… people relevant to our industry. A blog commentator is the individual with one sole intention – spreading good (I should say great) information each time he chimes in.
A veteran in the blog commenting game goes through a specific process that I’ll briefly share with you here so you can learn from it.
Step #1 ~ Research
Compile a list with the top 20 blogs in your niche or industry. Target sites with frequent posting activity, and which are getting sizable traffic, comments and social media votes.
I cannot give specific numbers here. As a general rule, I tend to blog comment on blogs who have a page rank of 3 or more, with 10+ comments on average per post.
These criteria help increase my chance to be seen and appreciated by others, which directly and indirectly will lead to traffic, leads, guest posting opportunities and similar deals.
Step #2 ~ Bookmark
Would you like to make a stir with your comment? Would you like to boost the odds of having your comment seen and appreciated? Then you have to rank amongst the first 3 commentators on each post.
Some prefer to use Google Reader or another RSS program for doing that. This is not the ideal way of getting on board at the right time as there’s a slight delay in how these RSS clients work.
You have a better chance to be in the first 3 commentators, if you would just bookmark these top 20 links in your favorite browser and open all of them in new tabs (Mozilla works great for this). You can then see in real-time which blog has new posts and dive in.
Step #3 Update
Some blogs (even the top ones) stop publishing or do it less frequently, so your objective is to update your top 20 blogs list with new sites from time to time. (I do it monthly.) Add new blogs, remove old ones. There’s no recipe here. You want to link diversify as well.
For example, affiliate marketers and bloggers looking to optimize their content for Google and rank in the SERPs (search engine result pages), prefer to blog comment mostly for “link juice” benefits. In other words, their blog commenting strategy is to leave as many comments as possible on as many niche related blogs.
They usually comment once, and you never see them again.
If their site relates to “blogging” then they’ll be targeting all kinds of online marketing sites, not just the “blogging” niche (which is a tiny niche anyway).
You’ll be targeting freelance sites, copywriting sites, affiliate marketing sites, and so on. The same if your site relates to fitness. You’ll be targeting nutrition sites, food & drink sites, etc.
If your site relates to “dog training”, then you’ll have to be a little creative. You can target sites that cover anything dog related (assuming they’re accepting comments), and at the same time go after more general sites such as veterinary, animal food, general health, and so forth.
What is Blog Commenting?
I can tell from a distance when somebody blog comments just for the sake of it (hint – to get traffic, or get his name out there) – and I bet you’ve seen short comments like these yourself:
“Hi Dean,
What a great post.
Keep up the good work.
Thank you!
Dean @ www.dean.com”
Now, this spam-disguised comment not only adds nothing to the community, but includes a link back to the commentator’s website, which is against the policy of most blogs accepting comments anyway.
Ensure you read the commenting rules before jumping in to comment on new sites.
Blog commenting is like having social interaction in real-life or networking at business events. When you meet your (old) friends, you’re excited to hear about them. You’re talking back and forth, having fun.
The same when going at a marketing conference; you introduce yourself, and naturally lead the discussion to find more about the other person. To have a good conversation starter, look up for connections between the event, her job /skill, and your activities.
You don’t get out there talking all about yourself, boasting about your natural talent, nor advertising an item out of a blue, right? Instead, you add to the discussion; you share practical tips or value-packed information – and more importantly – you actively listen to the other party.
It’s the same with blog commenting. Instead of talking face to face with others, you’re messaging them from your mobile phone while in the metro, at home in front of your computer, or whatever.
Commenting for Traffic
Blog commenting for traffic, what a cool idea, isn’t it?
Sadly, most people get it wrong. They’ve been hearing this over and over again, that they are now thinking… “blog commenting is the magic potion that solves my lack of traffic”. Nope!
Commenting for the sake of getting traffic is wrong on principle. When you think about yourself, you’re losing the objective of blog commenting: to help and serve the community.
So, how to make blog commenting work for getting traffic then?
You ensure your top 20 blogs list is highly relevant to the niche of the site you’re expecting to get traffic to… and at the same time you ensure you bookmark these sites and be the first to comment on their new content.
Secondly, you want to leave insightful comments that get noticed. That means sharing great (better than average) information and at the same time making your comments lengthier (4-5 phrases, or more).
Short comments won’t get noticed, larger ones will.
Always remember this.
Thirdly, whenever you’re commenting, strive to ask either the post author and/or any other commentator some key questions that will hopefully ignite the conversation and take it to the next level. What you want to achieve here is to be able to ask and answer questions multiple times throughout the entire conversation.
It’s common for me to comment 3 or 4 times on the same post and answer some of the most important questions raising on the post (which they are asked or not).
If you want traffic, then you have to increase your chances of being seen by as many people as possible. That means commenting multiple times and getting your name out there. Sooner or later it’ll cause a snowball effect and you’ll be quite known in that community.
That’s one of the most effective ways of tapping into other people’s traffic and getting them back to your site. Just like I’ve said, ensure the traffic is targeted.
Commenting for Leads
That’s another interesting subject. Affiliate marketers and bloggers alike are starting to get smarter. They recognize that first-time transactions usually don’t generate a profit, and only building a mailing list of prospects is the key to building long-sustaining relationships and generating repeat sales.
Getting new clients is a pain and usually costs money, time, or both. Getting clients who already know you to order again from you is 5x times easier than getting new clients. All it takes is one (carefully written) email to your mailing list, and you’ve made the sale, morally and legally.
How do you make blog commenting work for generating leads?
*** 1. Ensure you have / build a squeeze page that converts. There are free and premium tools out there to help with that. Here are 13 squeeze page examples to give you an idea of how yours should look.
*** 2. Ensure your squeeze page offer (give away item) is targeted and relevant to the audience of the sites you’re commenting on.
*** 3. Ensure you insert your squeeze page URL into the “website” field each time you comment. That’s how people seeing your (keyword-rich) name will land on your site and hopefully turn into leads you can follow-up with and profit for in months to come.
Quick tip: productivity counts. I highly recommend you install “easyComment” (a Mozilla Firefox add-on). This helps you create multiple profiles (with different names, emails and URLs). With one click, it’ll auto-fill in the fields required to blog comment.
Imagine, you won’t have to type in or copy-paste all this information, just focus on what to say to or share with the community. What a great time-saver!
Now, I’d like to give you a little bonus for reading so far…
A List with 30 Top Industry Blogs to Comment on
The reality is that each industry offers a ton of blogs where we can comment, that can be found with some insightful Google research. Here’s a short list of the top 30 blogs in three of the major niches out there. It took me a few days to find them and select for you. Hope you like and spread the word about them.
Health & Nutrition
Marketing & Blogging
Productivity & Self-Help
These links are in no particular order. I hope they are helpful for your commenting activity. At least you’re saving some time by not having to personally research these yourself. For other niches, you would have to follow the guidelines I shared with you today.
Now, I’d like to hear from you…
Let’s take this discussion further. Your comments and suggestions might give me new article ideas too!
This guest post was contributed by John Gibb, a top affiliate in the health industry and blog commenting enthusiast. Download his free super affiliate handbook: “The Road to Success” ($197 VALUE) and learn how he was able to generate 109 sales in a single day.