Thought I would do something a little different here… seems I can never make everyone happy… so I am going to give you all the best of everything. If I hear any bitching about this.. just keep it to yourself

Yesterday I did a fifteen minute interview JK Swopes aka “Normal Joe” of IM With Joe dot Com

and I have put this into the following formats…

• PDF (Click Here to Download)
• MP3 (Click Here to Listen Now)
• MP3 Zipped so you can download and listen later (Click Here to save to your computer)
• and last of all.. transcript is available for your reading pleasure below…

Start of Interview…

JK: Hey everyone this is Jason Katzenback with JohnCow.com. Today I wanted to do a recording with someone who I’m sure you are all pretty familiar with if you spend anytime on JohnCow.com.

In fact if you frequent any of the other popular blogs, like Yaro’s Entrepreneurs Journey, Joel Comm’s blog, or Jack Humphrey’s Friday Traffic Report I’m sure you’ll have seen his face there many times, and who I am talking about is the man behind http://www.imwithjoe.com and I wanted to talk to him, simply because first of all I am always impressed with how much commenting he’s doing, but I’ve gotten to know him over the last little while and his mention was…his number 1 traffic method has been commenting.

I know a lot of us talk about commenting but we never really get into it about how we do it and the steps that are followed. So I wanted to talk to Joe a little bit about that today and let him share it, then we can talk a little bit about his blog too. It’s quickly becoming one of my favorites to go to. He’s got good information and it will also make you laugh. First of all Joe; thanks for being here.

Joe: Thanks for having me, man.

JK: Oh you’re welcome.

Joe: After you was talking about me last week, I had to bust you out.

JK: I have to admit that comment on your blog where the guy wanted to give me a titty twister; I didn’t quite know what to do about that.

Joe: People get territorial man.

JK: Oh they do, they do. My wife actually had a good laugh and, yeah it was all in good fun.

Joe: Yup.

JK: What I want to do is I want to ask you four specific questions that hopefully our readers and listeners will get some value out of. So first of all, this is an important one, especially for people who don’t have much time in the day.

How much time do you spend on commenting per day?

Joe: Man that varies. I would say at least you gotta spend about an hour, a solid hour; during the week. Now on the week-ends I ramp it up quite a bit and that’s usually when I get more of my commenting done on the week-ends, but I have a specific set that I go through during the week and try to get on. The thing, I mean if you’ve got at least an extra hour you can get a lot of stuff done. I say an hour because I actually read, you know, read the post I don’t go in and say “Hey good post.” So…

JK: And that’s such an important part and if you look at the blogs that you mention that you comment on and I know myself I’m pretty strict on it. If someone just give’s a generic reply, they haven’t proven themselves as a commenter, I’ll usually just spam it out. I’m thinking it’s just someone who’s trying to give a back link. If it’s someone for example, if you just gave a quick reply I know you’ve proven yourself with other comments. I think that’s a huge mistake. You kind of hinted on this, that you have a process you follow.

Can you kind of just give us an idea of what your process is and how you use commenting?

Joe: My process is ever changing; I just switched it up probably this week or like towards the end of last. I had a process where I categorized all my RSS feeds into specific groups. If a blog had top commenter’s they would all go in one group, if it had comment love or keyword love or, you know? A lot of different things I would categorize and put into different groups like that. On top of that I always had a set of blogs that I read daily and you know, always have a list of blogs that I read that are new for the week and stuff like that. Recently I went through and kind of cleaned house, got rid of a lot of blogs that I actually don’t read and just narrowed it down to daily, blogs that I read daily, blogs that I read every week, I got one for new blogs that I found that week and…what’s the other one? Daily, Blogs, Weekly, New Blogs…I think that’s pretty much it.

JK: Do you track when you’re finding a new blog do you have a process, do you test the new blog and make sure you’re getting your comments approved and then watch to see if you get any traffic from them? Do you have any strategies like that?

Joe: The main thing I like to look for on a blog when I comment is if they have subscribe to comments enabled, otherwise I can’t really keep track of it. For a long time and I know I’ve met many people that have thought the same thing, I thought that subscribe to comments was a default feature in WordPress, so for awhile I didn’t have it on my blog. I think it was Yan, he told me “Yo you need to put subscribe to comments on your blog.” And that was a few months back. For the longest I just thought that was just the default, so if they don’t have that on there and there not a blog that I visit regularly I’m not gonna comment on there because I don’t wanna just be a one hit drive by comment person. I rather focus on, you know? Commenting on specific blogs, then going around and throwing my link up and my name up on different blogs that I have no plans on going back to.

JK: So basically what you’re saying is that you kind of found your home base of blogs that you visit regularly, you’re always looking for new blogs and different areas, but, also first of all you look to make sure that it’s got a subscribe to comments and you also like to see if there’s something like comment love and keyword love.

Joe: Right, Right. Lately I re-organized everything, so a lot of that stuff I don’t organize my RSS feed that way anymore. Actually you can see all my RSS Feed, it looks like a blog roll on my blog now, cuz I have it all in separate boxes. Those are actually my RSS subscriptions.

JK: That’s on your blog http://www.imwithjoe.com

Joe: Right. So if you go over there, you can see Daily, Weekly, New Blogs, you can see all that stuff listed right there and that’s actually directly from my feed reader. It will update dynamically you know if I change somebody from daily to weekly or weekly to daily or if it’s a new blog that I’m reading, I’ll just add it to my reader and it will just show up there.

JK: Basically one thing that you are saying, if there’s anyone out there that wants to encourage people to post comments on their blog, because we all know that the more comments you get on your blog, the better it is; because first of all it encourages interaction by others but also the search engines love it. But it would probably be pretty wise to enable at least the subscribe to comments and maybe one of those great plugins. I’m a bit fan of comment love, if someone’s taking the time to comment I want to give them a link back, but make sure it’s not done in a spammy way.

Joe: Right, well I think if you want to attract quality comments then you should put in that subscribe to comment, cuz most people who are putting in quality comments probably want to come back and see what you have to say about. Now they don’t care if they are just driving by and leaving a link because they see that you have a certain PR or whatever on your blog, then their not gonna care about subscribe to comment, it’s not gonna make a difference. But I noticed as soon as I put that on my blog I started getting higher quality comments.

JK: What are your main blogs? You’ve got maybe a half dozen, or maybe a little bit more I’m not sure, but why have you chosen those blogs as your main ones?

Joe: The blogs I choose, I mean I just…when you first start blogging, you hear everybody say you know “you should do this to build link and build traffic” and try to you know find the blogs that are most popular or have the highest PR, but I realized I wasn’t really following that because I just choose blogs based on the content and the community of the blogs and the content they are providing. If I vibe with the blogger or I like their content and they are helping me out, those are the people I continue to go too and network with.

JK: You hit on something real powerful there. Me and you we’ve started communicating more recently and it’s a good way to build a relationship with people as well. If you’re a blogger and all of a sudden you see someone who’s a regular contributor, supports what you’re doing their going to be a lot more open to you communicating down the road as well. But if you’re a fly by nighter and say ‘hey I’ve commented once on your blog, do you have a moment?’ I’m going be like “well there’s a lot of people who’ve commented once.’ But if I see that your someone whose adding value to my blog, I’m going to be in a position that I’m going to listen to you because I’m thinking well I don’t want this guy to leave. I think that’s a great point that you can use it as a networking tool as well.

Joe: That’s basically what it is for me, it’s not just you know ‘let’s go, let’s find where we can get links at’ I just, you know I find a blog that I like and I tend, I’m going to play loyal deuce, I tend to get loyal to certain blogs and that’s just where I go. I’m always looking for new ones but I don’t just pick them on popularity otherwise I’d be on a whole bunch of blogs that I don’t comment on that a lot of people do. But I don’t do it because 1 – their not really appealing to me personally and I just don’t find them interesting and 2 – there’s no point, if I’m not going to say something worth while then there’s no point of me even commenting to say “Hey” so my name shows up on this blog or that blog.

JK: You know it’s funny I’m sure you get this as well, you get those repeated comment that say things like “Well I didn’t agree with you at first but your last paragraph made sense.” And you know that’s somebody just copying and pasting or using some spam system. But if they would just take the time whether it was five minutes to read the post and put something worth while and get their comment approved by a blog that’s high quality. Cuz the blogs they are getting approved on are not high quality blogs, so the long term benefit is so minimum. So if you just take the time and do this right, actually read and I think one of the things your saying too is because you have a home base of blogs of stuff that you like to read, it makes it a lot easier to go and comment because you want to read what’s there instead of making it a chore to find blogs and kind of struggle through the content.

Joe: I know people that do that and they have, they doing blog commenting, they just out looking for random blogs to comment on and if I say I’m, you know I’m catching up on my blog comments, that means I’m catching up on reading. I can’t just; I can’t just fly through and read, like if I come to your site I’m not just going to be able to just you know read it in five minutes and read, cuz you know you write long posts. Same with Yaro, he writes long posts, I can’t just go in two minutes and comment. It takes time to do it because people are writing quality content, so the posts are going to be a little bit longer and you’re going to have to take the time to read it.

JK: Now one of the things that a lot of people do and I see people doing it and it just mind boggles me; why they even try, is being spammy with names on the post and links inside the post. What are your comments on that, like when you’re commenting, in general what are your feelings on that?

Joe: I’ve never really been one to put links in my comment, I finally did it once ever and it was directly related to a post and it was on a blog that I frequent, “oh yeah I just did that over here.” but for the most part I don’t put links in my posts. I don’t really like the “sell more tupperware bowls” as comment names neither. I mean just, you know; if you want to comment on my blog use your name. If keyword love is enabled then that’s different, if not, just comment as your own name then. I tend to think higher of commenter’s that do that instead of using a keyword as their name.

JK: Yeah and I think, yeah your right. There are tools like keyword love but still they still enable it so the link is separate then the name. But even if it’s a brand, for example like John Cow or Shoemoney or you know any of those where it’s just a name where you recognize it right away, but if you see posts that are “The best mesothelioma help out there.” You know it’s like well, and their giving you a four word comment, you’re like ‘no I don’t think so.’ Because you gotta think when you’re leaving a comment and you’ve mentioned this a few times, you’ve got to add value. You want to, it’s like a you scratch my back I’ll scratch yours. You provide a value comment; I’ll approve it and give you the link love.

Joe: There’s definitely a method to my madness. The blogs that I choose to comment on. Content is the first thing. Like you said, the more you comment and offer good content in your comments on another blog, those people are going to take notice.

JK: I’ve noticed your blog, your starting to rank up there pretty good with some regular commenter’s and getting quite a few comments per post. What percentage of your increased traffic has been from commenting on other blogs?

Joe: Man, I would say at least maybe 50, 60 probably 75%. I talk to different people, different bloggers, I talked to one a couple of months ago. He was like his girlfriend seen me comment on his blog and she was like “That’s that guy imwithjoe” and I’m like ‘well how she know me?’ and he’s like “Well she recognized your picture somewhere, I don’t know.” So I mean you know when people start seeing you and I’m the same way, if I start seeing the same people on certain blogs that I read, there’s a higher chance I’m going to go visit that blog.

JK: It’s almost like building a brand name. You know, if your using a different keyword every time and your avatar’s different all the time, cuz it’s different URLs and everything, but if you stick with it, like your using your name and everything, people start to recognize it and they get curious. Man this guy’s all over the place, and they want to check it out.

Joe: Right

JK: Well Joe I just want to thank you so much, because I’ve been wanting to, I mentioned in a post a couple of weeks ago I wanted to interview you just because of the commenting side of things. How old is your blog, the http://www.imwithjoe.com, how long has that been around?

Joe: Ah man it’s probably…I think I started it in like March.

JK: So this is a pretty new blog and its started to gain some good momentum.

Joe: Not even six months.

JK: So there you go everyone, that’s the power of commenting and that’s the strategy used by Joe from http://www.imwithjoe.com go check it out, he’s got a lot of cool videos out there, he’s just real down, he loves eating “sammiches”.

Joe: Yeah man “sammiches”.

JK: And he’s got some pretty fancy sponsor’s too. So go check it out and have a laugh. So again Joe thank you very much and to all the readers of John Cow we’ll be talking to you later.

Joe: Alright, Thanks.

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