Blogless

On my best days I find self-marketing unpleasant, and on the other six days a week I find it nearly impossible. I am regularly torn between my ethical imperative — that the whole practice is ugly and should be unnecessary (that content should be king) — and my ontological one — the stone fact that it is completely necessary (that relationships are king).

Needless to say, this leaves me at what feels like an impasse. Namely, either I invest a lot of time learning how to market myself that I could otherwise be putting into client and personal projects that are in my major field, or else, I can doom myself to permanent obscurity. Can’t somebody please help?

Somebody did.

Somebody did: One of the most well-known ways to publicize your site or blog is by making lots of interesting comments on other blogs around the Internet. Comments are also nice — if you’re like us, you’re a lot better at what you do (say, designing things) than you are at self-marketing — because they allow you to focus on your craft as a means of self-marketing.

"But," I’ve often wondered, "what makes a good comment?" Honestly, I have no idea how to shape or scope an idea in a way that’s might be considered meaningful or memorable qua comments. Entré BackType, a service to "find, follow, and share" comments on the web." Basically, it indexes the comments that your favorite web-celebrities and a-list bloggers are making around the web.

Among many other observations, I think it should be added that BackType provides an invaluable pedagogical tool for bloggers aspiring to increase traffic (read: all bloggers). By reading the types of comments left by popular bloggers in your industry, you get a unique feel for the kinds of content that the decision-makers in your industry’s blogosphere make, and therefore value.