Whether you realize it or not, comments are the most valuable part of your blog. They are the reactions, questions, and thoughts that go through the readers mind after reading your content, and you need to know how to leverage off of them.

 The main function of the comment is to provide feedback on whatever comes to mind to your reader. There are 3 specific categories of comments, each of which will help you in a variety of ways.

1. The Remark
2. The Question
3. The Trackback

1. The Remark

 The remark can be as simple as “Cool Post” to as complex as a full blown analysis. Contrary to your immediate reaction, the later aren’t the better. Now you might ask how a one liner is favorable and the answer is simple, the average everyday ad-clicking blog reader is not a professional, nor are they looking to become one. It may sound silly but niche driven sites are more populated by the peaked interest of the norm of society rather than the professional elite in that niche. This even pertains to my site where my traffic is dominated by users who aren’t elite webmasters. They may have a site and be looking to learn a few things from here, but here’s a fact. Most people do not and will never implement the ideas discussed in my article, and yet they still come to read new posts everyday. Your site is driven by the norm and thus you must cater to the norm. Thus the short remark is the ideal representation of what your readers like and allows you to better cater your writing to their interests.

First off all, it shows that this post had a strong enough interest by the reader to comment on it. Start by identifying what the post is about. Is the category something that has repeatedly been met with comments on your blog or is this the first time? Did you have specific aspects of your post that were different than your regular posts? These include things like:

1. A humorous voice or style of writing
2. An appraisal or rant of a product or service
3. An analysis of a product or service
4. A certain style of image

 The great thing about this is even if your blog doesn’t receive any comments, you can still go to other popular sites in your niche to see what comments they are getting. From here you follow the same list and try to identify what was so unique about the post that made it so popular. next try to mimic whatever you found to be so unique about that post or article. Maybe you don’t hit the nail on the head the first time, or the second, but keep trying! Your going to get it right, and the results will show.

2. The Question

The question you’ll discovery is practically a freebie given to you by the reader. Even without realizing it, the commenter is telling you exactly what your post didn’t have. When someone asks a question your first thought should be on identifying why they asked that question.

1. Was it something the article did not cover in detail or missed completely?
2. Was it something that was unclear in your article?
3. Was it something relating to it that may have been provoked by your article

A question is free gold in that you have identified exactly what your reader doesn’t know and thus he’s given you a free idea for a post. If one reader asks it, it’s very probable that another reader has the same question. Thus it’s in your best interest to publish posts about the question as soon as possible as that is what your readers are interested in. Just in case you didn’t get the huge mind blowing idea of that last sentence let me rephrase it for you in bold. Instead of stabbing in the dark to guess what your readers want, they are telling you what they want on a silver-platter. It doesn’t get any better!

Questions are invaluable as they leads you to write original content that no one has wrote about before or that is otherwise inaccessible to the reader who asked. If the reader had asked a question that means he couldn’t easily find it himself. This means one of two things. You’ve either tapped into original content that has never been talked about before and thus will dominate the search engine rankings. Or two, the search engine results are so limited or off-topic that it will be easy for you to dominate the top 3 results.

 Bonus Tip: When writing an article about a question, mention the name of the commenter at the very beginning and hyperlink it to their website or blog. This will help build a sense of community around your blog and shows people you care about them.

3. The Trackback

The trackback, albeit a bit more minor than the others, is also a valuable way of measuring up your content for what it’s worth. A trackback is the first sign that other publishers give a shit about your writing. Sure maybe it’s just a spam-site or some guy that steals article to put on his website, but they are a good sign nonetheless. If someone is posting or quoting your article somewhere else, they are acknowledging your skills as a writer. Thus if you start to see these more and more you can now tell yourself “I’m so good I’m worth stealing from now.” On a more serious note I would encourage you to check out the more “legitimate” trackbacks. Identify what their site is about. Identify its popularity too as there is no use in mimicking a dead-weight site. See what kind of comments are left on your article there and analyze them using the techniques listed above.