I wish that I had found CoComments a month ago. TheCaymanHost turned me on to this, and it’s going to save my bacon. I can tell already.
In the past week I have posted twice saying “I can’t remember where I saw this, but blah blah blah.” (Referring to a place that I commented, but didn’t bookmark.) My bookmarks are cluttered enough, and now I’m on a commenting rampage, and I can’t bookmark every single site I visit.
CoComment uses an unobtrusive Firefox plugin to keep track of the blogs you visit and the comments you leave. You can also delete references to places you know you don’t want to return to or to track.
*EDIT* You do not have to use Firefox, but I think it’s by far the easiest. Non-Firefox users have an option called Bookmarklet as explained on the CoComment website. *END EDIT*
I’ve only just started using it, and I tell ya, I think it’s the niftiest thing since RSS readers. If you join up, drop me a friend invite! My username is Jayne .
Oh and why am I such a comment ditz these days? Because I ran across a blog (umm, I can’t remember where…. see what I mean?) where someone was giving blog advice and he gave some “blogwork” to all his readers to leave 20 comments on other blogs per day. (I took this to mean NEW blogs… not ones already on your own blogroll or that you regularly visit.)
So I decided to keep track of how many comments I leave, and to try to leave 20 per day per blog I run (which thankfully at this point is just two).
Holy guacamole. It’s harder than I thought! I really thought I was already leaving that many, but it turns out I couldn’t possibly have been. I was probably reading 40 blogs, but only commenting on 3-4 of them.
The experiment I’m running is to do this for a week and see if it raises the traffic I get and the amount of comments my own posts get. So I’ll keep at it and let you know the results next week.
And now, in the meantime, I’ve got a little helper to remind me where I leave all these comments, and the many worthwhile blogs out there.
September 18th, 2007 at 7:29 am
Hey, this is a great blogger device! Many, many, thanks! I’m also on the journey to receive as much traffic as possible. Although, I was under the impression 10 comments a day would suffice. Me thinks I’m in the presence of an overachiever!
Anyway, if you’re bored stop by my way! I’m a stand-up comedienne blogging her way to stardom.
My digs:
Quest For Comedic Stardom
http://standup101.blogspot.com
September 18th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Hi Jayne
Thanks for writing a comment on my blog and yes I have almost got my blogging license back after a great comeback with some good posts. Now I am a bit concerned at the thought of leaving 20 comments per day. Just tried to work how many I am leaving per day - and it has not been deliberate - I just respond if I am interested and WOW I am known as a prolific commenter but 20!!!
BTW I use co-mment which I believe may be better than cocomment. What I do is take my RSS feed from co-mment and send it through my Google Reader. You can check how I use co-mment here!.
If you really want to comment on 20 new blogs a day I suggest you subscribe to ttechnorati tag feeds on your niche topic area. Here is how I use technorati.
Good luck with your challenge.
Sue
September 18th, 2007 at 11:07 am
Could be! It’s difficult to say what would “suffice”.. I think it depends on your goals. I’m finding that 40 comments a day (20 per blog) would be very tough! I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it. I really just wanted to pick a number that was enough over my norm, that I could see how much of a difference it made to my traffic and feed membership.
Thanks for stopping by! I will definitely check out your site.
September 18th, 2007 at 11:23 am
Thanks, Sue! I’ll check out those links!
September 18th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Hi Jayne
Thanks for joining me at CoComment and for the link
CoComment seems to have several benefits, not least of which is an increase in links to your blog as people track comments. It’s still a little buggy at the moment but once you get the hang of it it does become very useful.
Every now and again I find it misses comments and it’s not until I visit the blog that I see them, but, all things considered it means not having to subscribe to comment follow ups via email all the time and helps out on blogs that don’t offer that option.
September 18th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
Wow, thanks for sharing this service Jayne.. this might be just the thing I’m looking for. As you mentioned in your post I too have the memory of a goldfish and a bookmark jungle.. so finding places I’ve commented can be hard work even if I’ve bookmarked them!.. and sifting through my browser history is a less than glamourous trip down memory lane and can be too stressful for the old brain.
But having something like this would give me a peice of mind and help to keep my bookmarks becoming any more cluttered than they are currently.
Thanks again for the share.. I’m going to give this baby a test run.
Jamie
September 18th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Hi Jayne,
I’ve been using CoComment off and on since it first hit the scene awhile back. I had pretty much stopped using it for several months and then when I got the e-mails from them in the last couple months, I signed back in and started using it again.
I think it can be a very valuable tool…but at this point, I’ve been finding that when I have it enabled a lot of times I get an error when I’m trying to submit comments. Have you noticed this at all? Let me know because if they’ve fixed whatever bugs were there, I’d love to start using it all the time again. Without it, I’m pretty bad at keeping track of the comments I leave unless people have the subscribe to follow-ups plugin!
September 19th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Thanks for the feedback, all!
Dana: The only problem I’ve noticed is that I can’t comment on Bitter Women with it, since it uses threaded comments. There’s some incompatibility with the firefox plugin, so if I want to comment there, I have to switch to Internet Explorer. It’s inconvenient, but I’ve written to them to see if there’s a solution for that, as I really like my threaded comments!
I haven’t added threaded comments here yet, so it hasn’t been a problem.
That’s really the only glitch I’ve noticed, except that not every comment I leave seems to show up on my list.
I’m still very hopeful that it will work out though! I’ll use it for a week and then report back.
I checked out co-mment (A different system) and it didn’t seem to offer quite what I wanted. I also tried, as Sue suggested, subscribing to Technorati tags in my reader, but I’m going to have to refine that or quit it, because do you have any idea how many people tag their posts with “humor”?!?!?!
September 19th, 2007 at 5:01 pm
I just posted about co.mment this morning! I just found you on BBB. Can’t wait to check out some of your other posts.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:46 pm
See, I’m terrible…I just remembered that I had asked you a question about something, but I couldn’t remember what or where exactly I had left the comment.
Sounds like maybe things are working a little better. And obviously, I could use the help…so here goes nothing. I enabled it just now. Wish me luck…
September 23rd, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Hi Jayne
Wrote this comment in response to your comment on my blog - thought I should add it here as well.
I’m not sure that I gain any traffic using Technorati but I have found lots of great new blogs to subscribe to and read so has definitely been worth it.
Also have gained a better understanding of how other write on the same niche area as I do so it helps me with writing my posts - this way I am able to write them differently from how other people are writing them.
Oops — reading your comments looks like Humor is a hard tag to follow - good luck. BTW obviously co-mment was not pressed because I missed your comments when you responded to my comments. My apologies - normally pretty good.
So now that you have road tested both co-mment and co-comment can you tell me why you prefer co-comment over co-mment?
Sue
February 4th, 2008 at 3:46 am
Thnks for this morsel of info