Sphinn Latest Comments

Posted by Edward Lewis, aka pageoneresults™
SEO Consultants Directory System Administrator
Orange County, California | United States

Optimizing your Comments to Influence

Think of the Latest Comments area as your page <title>. You have approximately 74 characters split evenly across two lines (37 per line) to get your message across. How do you best utilize those 74 characters? What's your strategy? Have you given it much thought? As an outsider looking in, I'd say that some of your Sphinners need some SEO training, they really do. I've watched that Latest Comments list now for a week and gasp when I see some of the stuff that appears there. Its like, "oh my, what were they thinking?" Save all that fluff for the body of your reply, not the <title> or what appears as the Latest Comment.

The Power of the Comment
Eye Fixation and Latest Comments
Personal Branding
Getting Someone's Attention
Driving a Topic - Influencing the Node
Quality over Quantity - Signal over Noise
Quality Comments make a Quality Sphinn

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The Power of the Comment

Based on my short stay at Sphinn (2007-07-13 to 2008-07-16), I picked up real quickly just how powerful the entire commenting features are within the Pligg platform. Many of you are missing the boat on a prime opportunity. I'm not going to spill the beans just yet but I will provide you clues which will assist you in becoming a Top Sphinnfluencer.

The number one challenge I noticed when reviewing Sphinn was the fact that topics were making it to the Hot Topics list (20 or more Sphinns) but they didn't have any comments. There are even topics with 40+ Sphinns and they still show the Discuss link which means there have been zero comments to date. Here is a prime example using one of my well respected peers Bill Slawski...

Yahoo Patents Anchor Text Relevance in Search Indexing

Here we have an excellent topic of discussion with 44 Sphinns and not a single comment, not one. I'll bet that 20 of those Sphinners didn't even visit the resource. That seems to be natural, that's the Friends network at play. But you know what? Bill Slawski deserves a hell of a lot more than a Sphinn. I would have commented on that topic for sure. And yes, I know I can comment on his Blog too but, the real power of commenting lies within the Sphinn Community. Those 44 Sphinns wouldn't mean a whole lot to me unless there was some meat behind them. A Sphinn without a Comment is like a day without sunshine. Is that corny or what? Its true, it is! Let me prove my point...

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Eye Fixation and Latest Comments

When I first arrived at Sphinn, that Latest Comments list is where my eyes were immediately fixated. I'm a real time person and that Latest Comments area had the same appeal to me as a well known Recent Posts List with Red Balls and Yellow Exclamation Marks . For me, that would be my window into the real time action and/or I might be glued to the Comments tab from the top menu.

Either way, that's where the action is. That Latest Comments area is a gold mine for optimization and "influencing" topics. I won't provide too much detail from the search engine side as I don't think I need to, there is a natural occurrence happening with the commenting features of Pligg. Some of it shouldn't be happening but it does and apparently Google likes it. I know, I've been through thousands and thousands of indexed results from Sphinn over the past seven (07) days.

During my first day of being "active" in the Sphinn Community, I ran a small branding experiment in a somewhat bold move. When I was finished, I had just about filled up the Latest Comments area with my "phrase branding" experiment. I believe I had posted about 15-20 of those pageoneresults says references before being put on the carpet about it by a Sphinn Staff member which is what I would expect, thank you. But, that was only after my hyper Desphunn and Report as Spam activity where I may have pulled the trigger too soon on one or two topics hitting the What's New list. I had already established a bad reputation with some of the Sphinners and it wasn't working in my favor.

In that short period of the "pageoneresults says" phrase branding exercise, I was able to generate a whopping 1,200 references within the Sphinn Community for that phrase. How did that happen?

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Personal Branding

If you are a real Sphinner, you will have figured this out long ago as it carries right over from your days in the SEO space, common sense optimization strategies. In my above experiment, I wanted a few to know that it was pageoneresults who was commenting. That is one strategy.

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Getting Someone's Attention

If I wanted to get someone's attention, I might place their username in front of whatever it is I write to get their attention. I see some doing @pageoneresults when replying and I'm guessing that is the standard procedure. That works too but it interferes with my username. I don't want any additional characters merged with my username, I'd like it to remain pageoneresults. That @ symbol invokes too many harvesting bots anyway.

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Driving a Topic - Influencing the Node

If I were commenting for the first time on a new topic, I'm going to use those 74 characters to their fullest to make sure that I reference the author, the title of the article along with my "influence" to "read this" and get involved with the "discussion". I'm not going to let a good topic sit there and wait for Sphinns. I'm going to come in, "read it", "visit the resource", "read that resource", come back, Sphinn it, and finally make a comment on what I just read and understood or maybe didn't understand. Even if its a one or two paragraph confirmation that I enjoyed reading the article and came away feeling satisfied, that is worth a Sphinn.

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Quality over Quantity - Signal over Noise

Just because one of my friends posted something and wants a Sphinn, that doesn't mean I'm Sphinning. No, I want to investigate the resource. If my Friends are looking at what I'm Sphinning and what I am commenting on (influence/hint), I want to make sure it is worth their while to visit my profile and see what my latest shenanigans are. I know people follow my WebmasterWorld Profile to see what my latest activities are and what I'm saying and/or not saying. I do the same thing with my peers. I guess it is similar to your Stalking but we don't have all that "social orgy" stuff going on.

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Quality Comments make a Quality Sphinn

In summary, if you are going to Sphinn, make it a quality Sphinn. If you've got a great article that you just wrote and you are going to Submit it, be sure to alert a friend who is a "commenter" and/or "influencer" so that you can "drive" your topic, grab the wheel and steer it to where it needs to be, on that Hot Topics list. Push that puppy into existence and get other Sphinners involved. Sure, they can comment at your Blog or whatever. The real power behind that topic lies within the comments made by other Sphinners along with how they optimize the first paragraph of their comment and the quality of their discussion. One liners with little meaning and me too's don't count. Even if the discussion only last for a few comments, that is more than adequate to power that topic. The Pligg comment platform is your best friend as a Sphinnfluencer.

There is a slight bug in the Latest Comments listing when you do not utilize the full 74 characters of the first paragraph, it will jump to the next element and start with that. Be careful with what you have in that second element. Certain stuff just doesn't display right in the Latest Comments. Hyperlinks do not work either. When you see those blank list items (bullet points), I believe those are people trying to hyperlink in that first 74 characters. I tried that one immediately and saw the end result.

When you comment and have a short one liner of less than adequate length, the Latest Comments will default to that next element and complete the 74 character display. I learned to keep that next element as a <p> and place a space before it each and every time. That assures me that there are no run on sentences in the Latest Comments area. It happened once, I caught it and then changed my commenting ways from that point forward.

I'm sure many of you are wondering how someone with only seven (07) days of Social Media Boot Camp (at Sphinn no less) could even begin to offer advice to all the professional Social Media Marketers. I have to wonder that myself, I really do. I was hoping to learn from you guys and gals, not the other way around.

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