10 Ways Blogging Can Improve Your Life

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Posted on 30th July 2010 by Annabel Candy in Featured |blogging |writing


Have you ever read a blog and thought about starting one yourself because you could do as good a job? Most of us could benefit from keeping one. Especially those with small business aspirations! I’ve got over 10 blogs but only one of them is public. The rest are kept private and used as a way for me to organise information, access it from anywhere and search my data fast.

You don’t have to share your blog with the world or anyone at all for that matter. You can keep it private, share it only with a few trusted people or just keep everything as a draft so no one can see your work.

10 Ways Blogging Can Improve Your Life

1. Boost your confidence

Blogging’s easy and anyone can do it. With Wordpress or one of the other free blogging platforms and you can have your blog up and running in a few minutes. Anyone who thinks they don’t have the technical or writing skills will gain confidence once they set up a blog and see how easy it is to get started.

2. Have fun

People make jokes about bloggers like this one but I’m not ashamed to say I actually enjoy planning, researching, writing and maintaining my blog. It’s my baby and I can do anything with it I like. It’s not just me who enjoys it either, Chris Brogan wrote a post called I Love My Blog. Blogging really is fun and that’s probably why so many people are getting into it.

3. Be creative

We all need a creative outlet and blogging will allow you to explore, expand and experiment with your creative side. Keeping a blog isn’t just for writers either. You can use it to showcase your home improvement projects, paintings or herb garden and record and publish information via podcasts or video if those mediums hold more appeal for you.

4. Make friends

I didn’t start a blog to make friends and never expected to meet people through blogging but it just happens. Some blog visitors naturally relate to your blog content, they identify with you because of it and contact you. Thanks to my blog I’m in touch with people who I’d never have been in contact with otherwise. It still surprises me and the network of people you can engage with through blogging is a global one.

5. Improve your search engine ranking

If you have your own website adding a blog and updating it regularly could give you the edge over your competitors because the search engines prefer sites with new content. Of course you need to be writing about the topics your target audience will look for with the search engines to experience this benefit and you the more you write and the longer you keep updating your blog the greater the benefits.

6. Gain expert status

If you’re trying to establish a career or launch a new one maintaining a blog can position you as an expert. Having a website and blog is part of the package these days. Even if you want to get featured in the print press the first thing any journalist who wants to find out about you does is use the Internet. You want people who Google you to find your blog and not another website with information you have no control over.

7. Earn money

If you build up a sizeable readership you might be able to create a second income stream from your blog. Don’t give up your day job but if you’re passionate about your topic and believe it’s possible you may well be able to make it happen.

8. Plan better

A blog is a brilliant way to plan anything from a business to a book, a wedding to a wake. You could even use one a blog to plan a blog. Here’s how. Most Wordpress blogs have a categories section so if you’re collating information you can easily divide it into sections which make it easy for you to browse and locate information. You can then access that information any time from any place as long as you have access to a computer and the Internet. For example, a keen cook could use a blog to organise all her favourite recipes or a teacher could use it to keep ideas for lessons, organise lesson plans and keep notes on students. As a simple system for content management, blogs are invaluable.

9. Keep your mind active

Although you can easily start blogging right now by setting up a simple blog and telling people to visit it, most bloggers take a while to get good at blogging. There’s lots to learn and because the Internet is constantly evolving even professional bloggers who’ve been blogging for five years or longer are still learning new things about it. The good thing is that the learning curve isn’t too steep so you can set up a blog and learn as you go. The skills blogging will teach you such as writing, marketing, networking and computer literacy will come in useful in other areas of your life and constantly learning new things keeps your mind active and engaged.

10. Share your story

We all have a story to tell. At the very least blogging is a fabulous way of keeping a journal of your life, art, family, travels, hobbies or studies. It creates a permanent record you can look back on any time. Your kids might even find it interesting to look back on one day. Who knows, maybe the whole world will?

Blogging hasn’t just changed my life it’s enriched it. It’s changed the lives of well known bloggers like Chris Brogan, Leo Babauta, Brian Clark and Darren Rowse for the better too as well as countless other bloggers both professional and amateur. Are you ready to find out if it can improve your life?

How do you think blogging could benefit you?

Image: Leorix

Annabel Candy writes about living your dream at her personal development blog, Get In the Hot Spot. She runs a web design and web copy writing business with her husband from their home in Australia, and frequent distractions from the three rowdy kids, stunning beaches and noisy wildlife.

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11 Paradoxes of Being a Better Public Speaker

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Posted on 23rd July 2010 by Mike Brown in Communication |Featured |blogging


We’ve all heard how frightened nearly everyone is of public speaking. Maybe that’s understandable, but it creates the potential for lots of misinformed conventional wisdom spread by people who have to make presentations but haven’t had the opportunity to learn what really works.

To help correct some misperceptions about what creates better presenters and presentations, here are eleven public speaking paradoxes for reluctant presenters to accept, embrace, and follow:

1. Minimize your public speaking nerves by looking for as big an audience as possible.

My theory on nerves and speaking? We all have a certain amount of nerves getting up in front of a crowd: the more people in the audience, the smaller the amount of your nervousness each audience member has to absorb. The theory may sound silly, but with more people in the audience, there’s a greater likelihood of spotting individuals who get your message and show it in their eyes – always a comforting sign for a speaker. The more people, the more likely someone will find your jokes funny and start laughing or be moved by your remarks and start applauding (and trust me, it takes somebody being the first to applaud). These nerve-settlers all benefit from having a bigger crowd.

2. If you’re concerned about forgetting what you’ll say, take all the words off your slides.

The typical crutch to avoid forgetting your presentation is to put every word on your slides so you can turn around and read them aloud – which always makes for a deadly presentation. Putting everything on-screen also allows the audience to stop paying attention to you since they can more efficiently read your slides themselves. With only images (or at least very few words) displayed, however, if you forget your remarks or cover something different from what was originally written, nobody knows because the audience has no visual reference to spot the variation. You enjoy all kinds of freedom to change up what you say and how you say it, making it much easier to cover your forgetful moments.

3. To compare more favorably to the great motivational speaker on the agenda, ask to speak right after them.

Unsure speakers try valiantly to stay as far away as possible on the agenda from exciting speakers because they think they’ll seem worse by immediately following a keynoter. That’s simply a bad strategy. There’s invariably a buzz among the audience after an exciting, engaging speaker, and it’s wonderful to bask in it as the agenda’s next presenter. Not only do you get a free pass to lunch off the audience love the previous speaker created, you can always refer back to a point your predecessor made to refresh the audience’s glow while you’re onstage.

4. To satisfy audience requests for presentation materials, refuse to provide slide print outs.

Handing out your slides before the presentation creates a distraction as audience members are tempted to look at them and ignore you. Plus if you’ve taken the advice to primarily use graphics on your slides, having them won’t be of much learning value anyway. Instead, write an article with your presentation’s key points and invite the audience to visit your blog to review it. If you don’t have a blog, write your presentation summary to share with the event organizer for its blog or website. You’ll expand your reach, providing both your in-person audience and others interested in your topic the opportunity to learn from what you have to say.

5. When you want the whole presenting experience to just be over as quickly as possible, show up way early and make a day of it.

One of the best things you can do as a nervous presenter is to arrive early since it provides several advantages. You can see where you’ll be speaking, determine where to stand, and figure out solutions to challenges the equipment or conference venue create. You’ll also be able to arrange the setup so your computer will be in front of you – serving as a monitor – eliminating the tendency to turn away from the audience to see what’s on the screen. Being there early allows you to meet and interact with audience members, learning what interests them. Finally, you can watch other presenters so you can amplify or avoid points they’ve made, as appropriate. All these benefits will help make your presenting time seem to pass much more quickly.

6. If answering questions makes you nervous, encourage lots of them.

Questions are a giant opportunity to customize your content to what’s most relevant to the audience. They also provide a chance to catch your breath and drink some water as you turn the attention over to the audience momentarily. To get questions started, plant a few with people you’ve met before the talk so you begin with ones you are ready to address.  Plus always remember: if you’re stumped for an answer, ask other audience members to share their perspectives on the challenging question.

7. If you have a really loud voice, demand a microphone.

So many people, especially self-conscious men, try to avoid using microphones because they talk loud. Use the microphone. With a microphone, you can speak at your normal volume while also raising and lowering your voice as you’d like to create continued interest in what you’re saying and how you’re delivering the message.

8. Stand up while you present on a conference call or webinar because no one can see you.

Suppose you’re doing a webinar or other phone-based presentation. The natural tendency is to sit at your desk since the audience isn’t watching. True, but the wrong move nonetheless. Standing up and “presenting” your comments gives your voice more energy, which translates to a better phone-based talk. Bonus tip: don’t speak in the same volume you normally would for a phone conversation. Instead, over-emote since the phone dampens your delivery style. Delivering your message in this manner creates a much more engaging audience experience.

9. Since presentation mistakes are embarrassing when they’re noticed, point them out and have fun with them.

Some speaking mistakes are small and go unnoticed. Others (the computer or projector fails, a video doesn’t play) are apparent to the audience. Rather than dreading them, here are two things to do. First, anticipate what might go wrong and have a funny (ideally self-deprecating) comment to share for each one. Secondly, have a backup plan for each of the potential disasters. When you handle presentation adversity with a laugh and a quick recovery, you’ll win an audience over even faster than by delivering a seamless speech.

10. If you don’t like the sound of your voice, record it and listen to it over and over.

The single best investment I’ve made as a speaker has been a digital audio recorder to capture every presentation I do. While it can be tough to listen to yourself if you’re uncomfortable speaking, the gaffes you’ll hear quickly pinpoint areas to improve your skills. Another advantage? Next time you’re speaking on the same topic, you can review your previous presentation while rehearsing to remind yourself of what parts worked best and effective ad-libs that weren’t planned in your original remarks.

11. Deal with your anxieties about audience reactions by rewarding them for immediately sharing opinions.

While most conferences survey attendees, it’s often weeks later, and speakers frequently never receive results. That’s why the second best investment you can make in becoming a better presenter is creating your own simple evaluation form. Offer audience members a chance to win a book or give-away relevant to your presentation for sharing one thing they liked, didn’t like, found interesting, and would recommend about your talk. These four points from each presentation provide incredible feedback and reactions you never could have anticipated. The total cost of the books I’ve given away has paled in comparison to the improvement opportunities this strategy has yielded – especially from things people didn’t like.

There you have it. If you don’t enjoy speaking, these eleven paradoxes may seem very unnatural, but using them to your advantage will allow you to make dramatic improvements in your abilities as a public communicator!

Mike Brown leads The Brainzooming Group, helping organizations succeed more rapidly by expanding their strategic options and efficiently implementing innovative plans. He authors the Brainzooming™ blog, shares innovation ideas on Twitter, and wrote the ebook “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.” He's also a frequent keynote presenter.

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31 Proven Ways To Get More Comments On Your Blog

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Posted on 16th July 2010 by Seth Simonds in Featured |blogging


Do you want more comments on your blog? Let’s assume you already know how valuable comments are to your blogging experience. But how do you get more of them? Here are 31 ways to increase comments on your blog. Some are concepts I use regularly on my own blogs. Others I know about from watching other bloggers. (Note that I don’t necessarily endorse all methods. You have to decide what is right for you.)

  1. Take a Stand – Most bloggers wallow in moral cowardice because they fear backlash. Take some time to outline your beliefs on an issue that matters to you and publish your thoughts. (Do this sooner rather than later. It’s best to get the mistakes out of the way while you have a smaller audience.) Readers love watching to see if you’ll lose your cool in the comments of a post. (You will the first few times. It comes with the territory.)
  2. Ask For Help – Do you have a problem that you could use some help with? From athletes foot to banana bread, most readers are happy to look your question up in google and give you some resulting tips in a comment. (Asking for medical advice online is high on the scale of bad ideas unless it’s a medical community site…good for lots of comments and a follow-up post though!)
  3. Attack Somebody – If you’ve got beef with somebody, publish it! Know the difference between a flagrant attack and a thoughtful post that calls another’s behaviors or beliefs into action. Both will get a lot of comments but the first might garner a lawsuit. (I call this an “attack” because readers will nearly always view a post that includes names as an attack even if the content is very much about a concept and not a person. Know what you’re stepping into.)
  4. Congratulate Somebody – There’s a lot of arrogance online and any post that says, “I want you to check out this person and here’s why” will often win some comments about how much of a nice person you are. (Sure, you could be posting about somebody because you care about them…but there are many non-public ways to show you care that are often considered more meaningful. Go ahead and post to boost your own brand, just make sure you reach out to the people you care about in a genuine way.)
  5. Link Up – It doesn’t take much time to incorporate a few links into your posts and most blog platforms automatically notify the sites you linked to. If you want to go the extra mile, take a quick look at the sites you’re linking to and use terms related to their sites in your links. This is a great way to get noticed by larger sites that know enough about SEO to appreciate your effort. (Know that any comments you get from big blogs you link to will often be short and add little to the conversation. They’re just tagging you back…which is the point of your links anyhow.)
  6. Disappear – Most bloggers post too often.  They start getting regular comments and decide to increase their posting schedule from weekly to twice weekly or even daily. If you’ve bludgeoned your readers with too much content lately, take a break. Disappear for a week or two and come back with a really thoughtful post. They’ll welcome you back with open arms. (Posting thoughtful content less frequently is a much better way to build a vibrant community than retching rubbish onto an RSS feed. The internet will be okay if you don’t post for a bit.)
  7. Avoid Guest Posts – You’re not a genius editor with a huge network of willing writers who trust you to make sensible changes to their articles. Until that declaration no longer applies to you, hold off on the guest posts and focus on creating content that makes sense of your own ideas. (You can get the community jollies of guest posting by trading articles for edits/suggestions before posting your article on your own blog.)
  8. Accept Guest Posts – If you can find somebody with a great social network who doesn’t blog regularly, ask them to write a guest post for your blog. They’ll be excited about posting on a blog and push their entire network to read and comment on the article. (Quality doesn’t matter so much. You’re just cashing in on the “first post” rush that every blogger gets on a new blog…except you’re hijacking it for your own blog. Snazzy!)
  9. Try Different Media – If you always publish text posts, try making a video or drawing a cartoon to make your point. If you’ve been messing around with photoshop and have some cool cat-zebra mashups that you’re proud of, post away! (If you decide to do a video, PLEASE don’t begin with, “well, I wanted to talk to you about …. today.” Just get into your topic and rock it.)
  10. Kill Your Retweet Button – Giving people an easy-out is, some would argue, a comment-killer. Give your readers only one way to respond and they’ll be more likely to take it. (This only works well if you’ve got amazing content and are hoping to snag the fence-sitting readers who know they want to respond but aren’t ready to commit to a comment.)
  11. Kill Friendly Spam – Disqus, Chat Catcher, Twitback, etc all pull luscious bits of rubbish from various platforms and splooge them into your comment thread. Clear out the noise and let your readers know you’re serious about interaction and don’t just want to grease the slide for whatever comments come your way. (When readers think you value their input, they’re more likely to return and participate in multiple discussions on your blog.)
  12. Add Friendly Spam – If you’re looking just to boost comment counts and not discussion quality, there are a lot of friendly spam-gathering plug-ins available to pull social media reactions into your comment thread. (If you’re of the “more is better no matter what” school of thought, this is probably the best route to getting your comment count up.)
  13. Add a Retweet Button – If you’ve decided to go with #12, you’ll want to add the RT button so you can accelerate the Twitter-blog-Twitter visitor cycle. Every tweet is a “comment” so push, push! (I’m using an ordered list that makes me have a #13 and I’m pretending to be superstitious today….bear with me.)
  14. Ask for comments - Email friends, beg on Facebook, promise to film naughty twitvid’s in exchange for comments. Remember when you posted your very first article and begged your friends to read it and comment? It works even better now that you’ve got some friends who actually know what a blog is! (This actually works. I had a friend email me earlier asking for a comment on an article she’d written that was in an area of interest for me. Guess what? I commented gladly!)
  15. Close comments – Not on all of your posts. Just on some of them. If you post regularly but have trouble keeping interaction levels high, it might be a good idea to close comments on the blurbs and silly pieces so your readers know when you’d especially like their input. (If you’re a “social media blogger,” beware of closing comments. People will say you’re anti-interaction and throw moist cybertowelettes at you.)
  16. Respond to comments – Seriously, if you’re deciding between leaving comments on another blog and responding to comments on your own blog, choose your blog. If you can’t carry a conversation in your own home it doesn’t make much sense to try and start them in other places. Responding to remarks on your own blog lets readers know that you are truly listening and care about what they have to say. Obviously, that will often lead to more comments and repeat visits. (Don’t look to “A-listers”–especially in social media–for examples of good behavior when it comes to comments. They’re busy doing other things.)
  17. Extend Comments – If you get a bee in your bonnet while reading another blog, don’t waste your passion in a long comment. Put your thoughts into an article for your own blog and link back to it in a short comment on the post that inspired you. “Extending” a conversation in this way means more comments for everybody involved. (Linking back to the inspiring post is good business and makes up for any self-promotion you might have done in the comment that linked to your article.)
  18. Write About Death – The deaths of blogging, twitter, social media, advertising, traditional media, and celebrities are all good comment-catching topics. Even a thoughtful post about death in general would do quite well as it’s something most of us think about on a regular basis. (Writing an article about how you wish death on a particular person is a bad idea.)
  19. Write About Life – Find something that inspires you and write the living daylights out of it. Not only will you enjoy the process but readers will often pick up on your enthusiasm and choose to rock out with you in the comments section of your article. (If you’ve been writing about death recently, try stirring up the morgue with a few posts about thriving existence.)
  20. Write About Your Fears – Is there something besides death, failure, and drowning that scares you? Fear is something we all have in different amounts regarding different things. If you have a morbid fear of choking on celery, open up and share it with your readers. Most won’t directly identify with your particular fear but, between the laughs and jokes, you’ll find a level of connection you’d miss out on with an article about your strengths. (Readers generally respond to articles that portray some sort of risk to the author. Take a risk and enjoy the comments!)
  21. Write About A Failure – People love observing disasters. There’s nothing more enjoyable than reading about somebody crashing and burning when you know that they’re okay now so it’s alright to enjoy the story. “What I learned from burning my own house down” is a title sure to gather comments. (If it’s coupled with a post about the promised events.)
  22. Curse Often – Shock and awe is a tactic used by many bloggers who have trouble producing quality content. You can often make up for bad writing by cursing a lot and using odd flips in logic to keep readers guessing and entertained. Readers who find you disgusting will comment as will all the readers who find you terribly amusing. Comments galore! (I don’t adopt this tactic personally but I know of many bloggers who use it regularly.)
  23. Buy Comments – Using comments as a way to enter for a great prize is fail-safe way to get comments. If you want to force readers to surrender some value in exchange for your sweet schwag, make them respond to a thought-provoking question in their comment. (In spite of all the schwag hag hooplah circulating, I think give-aways can actually be leveraged into something that’s good for a blog-centric community.)
  24. Start a Comment Cluster – Groups of bloggers who always comment on each other’s articles are great for higher comment counts. Coment clusters form naturally over time but can be built with a little push and thoughtful effort on your part. Start out with one blogger and work your way up until you’ve got 10-15 bloggers in your cluster. (This only works if you have a group of bloggers that post articles with the same frequency. Otherwise one blogger “gets” more out of the deal and things go sour.)
  25. Trade Comments – Come right out and offer to leave a comment on any article chosen by readers who leave comments on your blog. Most comments are left out of either interest or a sense of reciprocity. Acknowledging the reciprocity and taking the initiative to leverage it into more comments for your blog is an effective way to boost comments. (Just be ready to read some really weird stuff and post comments on blogs you might not read otherwise.)
  26. Write About Blogging – If you’ve come across something useful or have an idea about blogging in general, the blogging community is introspective enough to happily clamber all over your article. Blogging about writing often has similar results. There are so many different ways to go about writing articles and publishing them on the web that sharing your perspective is certain to garner some attention. (You don’t need to be terribly helpful or offer a lot of insight. Just tell things as you see them and your readers will invariably respond.)
  27. Write About Twitter – It’s rare to find a regular Twitter user that doesn’t have an opinion or two about the service, company, or community that is Twitter. If you write an article about Twitter that fewer than 100 bloggers have written about already, you can be certain of comments from the Twitter-crazed masses. (Go overboard on this and you end up the mockery of your readers.)
  28. Write Short Articles – A best-case scenario involves a visitor spending 3-5 minutes on your blog. That’s just enough time to read a 300 word article and craft a brief comment in response. Learn to pack a lot of goodness into a small space and you’ll reap the benefits of comments from joyful readers who gladly reply to your blurb with a comment.
  29. Be Unexpected – Find a way to surprise your readers and they will always respond with a comment. How can you do this? Ask them to disagree with you or provide some evidence that you’re wrong about something. (Readers are often glad to disagree with you if they know you won’t take the disagreement personally. Surprise them with a welcome to disagree and watch the discussions pile up!)
  30. Make Announcements – Marriage, weightloss, death, celebrations, etc. Announcements are great comment-getters for two reasons. 1. They’re usually quite short and to the point. 2. Readers don’t have to think long and hard about the appropriate response. (Make it easy for readers to contribute and they often will!)
  31. Write For Yourself – The best way to get more comments than you know what to do with is to write articles that you personally find interesting. Use the social media platforms you enjoy most to share those articles with others and don’t stress out when comments don’t pile up on every article you publish. Life isn’t fair, the internet is full of weirdos, and it’s likely that your best article (in your estimation) will be one of your least-popular ones. (This is very true in my case.)

You may find some of these concepts boring and old hat. However, I’m hoping there are a few new thoughts in the mix that spark some ideas about how you can encourage your readers to interact with you more. Take the good bits home to your blog and play around with them. Find out what works best for you. A sustainable and interesting blog is one written by an author who truly takes joy in the blogging process. Best of luck!


photo: wim314

I'm an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.

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Confessions of a Spam-Catcher: How to Identify Spam

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Posted on 18th January 2010 by Dustin Wax in Communication |Featured |blogging |comment |spam |webmaster |website |writing


As part of my role as Lifehack’s manager, I am responsible for moderating the comments queue. Lifehack’s back-end has a “Pending” queue for comments that our spam-catching software thinks might be spam, a “Spam” queue for comments labeled “spam” either by the software or by me, and another queue for comments that have been approved, again either by the software or by me. As a general rule, I check that “Pending” queue several times a day, the “Approved” queue every day or so, and the “Spam” queue every week or so.

I’ve been doing this for two years, and I’ve gotten pretty proficient at figuring out what is and is not spam – a tough call to make sometimes, since spammers get more and more sophisticated in lock-step with those of us charged with blocking them. I present my “formula” here for two reasons: one, to give less experienced bloggers and webmasters an idea of how to catch spam on their own site, and two, to give commenters an idea of the kind of thing to avoid so their comments don’t get accidentally thrown in the “Spam” bin.

I should say, a big part of catching spam is a “feel” – intuiting that some comment just doesn’t feel right. I’m not sure I can capture exactly what goes into that feel. Andy Warhol once said that to recognize a great painting, first you have to look at a thousand paintings, and catching spam is a bit like that – the experience of having looked at thousands of spam messages cannot be easily encapsulated. But I’ll try as well as I can.

What is spam?

What makes a message spam is relative and subjective. In a sense, spam is like a weed – a weed is not any particular kind of plant, but a plant that isn’t wanted where it’s at. (See, for example, Wikipidia’s definition of Weed as “a plant that is considered by the user of the term to be a nuisance.”) For instance, Corn is delicious, but if it’s growing in your soybean field, it’s a weed. A message that, say, pimps a word processor might be perfectly welcome on a post that asks for product recommendations for writers, while on a post that just happens to mention writing, the same message could be considered spam.

Some messages are clearly spam; for example, anything delivered by a spambot programmed to leave its message wherever it can find an open form to submit through. But a message can be left by a living person, custom-written for the particular content it’s posted to, and still be spam. This list starts with the most obvious signs and moves to more vague and difficult-to-interpret signs. My guess is that a lot of people run into the ones further down the list because they post without thinking very clearly, so pay attention.

A comment is spam if it:

  1. Contains links to websites that are unrelated to the content.
    For example, a comment might say “I think your baby is really cute!” but the word “baby” links to a site selling baby clothes or even a Forex trading site or other scam.
  2. Is posted on more than one post.
     This is obvious, right? Real people don’t post the same comment over and over on different posts, no matter how relevant. most likely it’s a spambot responding to multiple posts on your blog that contain similar keywords.
  3. Contains more than one link.
    While there are a few situations in which a legitimate comment could contain several links, they’re fairly rare. As a general rule, the likelihood of a comment being spam increases directly with the number of links; anything over three and it’s virtually guaranteed to be spam.
  4. Is not directly related to the post.
    A lot of spambots (or even live spammers) crawl the web looking for posts with certain keywords and then insert a generic message loosely related to the topic on the hopes that it will slip past any human reader who is likely to just skim through their comments. Unless a comment addresses something specific about your post, it’s likely to be spam.
  5. Is overly complimentary.
    Most spammers are fairly astute observers of basic human psychology – particularly our desire to believe good things about ourselves. So they butter us up, saying things like “Great post! In fact, I love this whole site – I’m definitely going to come back again and again!”.
  6. Has keywords or a business name in the “Name” field.
    A basic search engine optimization strategy is to get your website’s address associated with specific keywords, and search engines look closely at the text associated with a link to determine the usefulness of the website linked to. Real people aren’t trying to game search engines, and frankly, we want to be recognized for our contribution, so we use our actual name, or a username. If you can’t imagine replying to a person by the name in their “Name” field, you’re dealing with a spammer. (For example, here’s one taken from our spam queue: “Having a good vocabulary not only gives a framework for thought. It also allows you to be concise and precise to make communication better.” This is relevant to the post, and thoughtful, but it was left by an entity named “dining room table”. It’s spam.)
  7. Links to a spammy business.
    This is a tough call – sometimes I’ll see a thoughtful comment clearly written in direct response to the post it’s commenting on, under a real person’s name, and still mark it as spam because they link to a site whose legitimacy is questionable. Could be porn, WOW gold scams, Forex scams, get rich quick schemes, blogs with stolen content, or anything else that feels to me like someone left a comment more to get their link out than to add to the discussion.
  8. Quotes the post without responding to the quote.
    This is a relatively sophisticated spam technique: pulling lines out of the post it’s responding to in order to make the language of the comment sound like real writing. Real people mark the quotes they’re commenting on (usually with quotation marks, but it could be by italicizing or bolding it, putting it in blockquotes, or some other means) and try to clearly separate their response form the post’s words.
  9. Is posted on an old post.
    Old posts tend to attract a lot of spam. Real people generally recognize that if a post is a year or so old, the conversation there is pretty much over. Spambots do not realize that. It still sometimes happens that someone comments on an ancient post, but the age of the post is a big red flag.
  10. Is in a different language from the site.
    If the point of a comment is to engage in discussion with the author of the post and his or her readers, it doesn’t make much sense to comment in a language that you’re not sure the author knows.
  11. Is from a Russian .ru domain.
    I hate to stereotype an entire top-level domain like this. I’m sure there are Russians out there making thoughtful comments on blogs all the time. And yet I’ve never had a comment that wasn’t spam from a commentor with a .ru domain or email address.
  12. Tells a long, personal story.
    This is experience talking – a lot of times you’ll see what appears to be a blog post in its own right in your moderation queue that starts off, at least, relevant, and is clearly written by a real person. This falls under the “Weed” heading – it might have been totally welcome except it’s out of place as a comment on your blog.
  13. Asks for specific support.
    This is another “weed” situation: a comment on a post about, say, installing Windows 7 that asks for help with a specific problem. Unless the point of your site is to answer specific questions about computer problems, this comment is out of place. There are better and more likely places to get help than on your blog.
  14. Feels wrong.
    Sometimes a comment just feels wrong – it is a little too smarmy, maybe, or it’s a little too formal and stiff. You click through the link and it’s a legitimate-enough site, maybe a little sketchy, but you can totally construct a case where this comment was written by a real person with something to say. The question, though, isn’t what was the intention of the writer, but what is the effect on the conversation on your site. If a comment doesn’t seem to quite fit, you’re well within your rights to “spam it”.

Anyone else have advice for would-be spam-catchers? Or for commenters who might be finding their comments relegated to the spam-heaps of history? Leave a thoughtful, non-spammy comment below!

Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He can be reached though his freelancing site at DustinWax.comDon't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.

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