For example, I use Twitter and am connected pretty much all day to Twitter whether it’s on my phone or at my desk.  When someone Twitters a website, my tendency is to ignore that link.  I have found that if I go and read the article and I’m able to leave comments on that post, there are quite a few other people that are reading that post from Twitter and other social networks that have picked that article up. Next thing I know I’m getting traffic from all of the social traffic that the blog post has been receiving.

So not only do I gain traffic from Twitter itself, I’m able to leverage the followers that Tweet has, but I’m also able to push it on to Digg and/or Reddit and/or other networks and create more traffic for that post. It’s amazing how much traffic you can generate if you follow good quality commenting rules and promote articles that you have commented on.  I read two really good articles about quality commenting.

The first article was  4 Effective Ways to Comment on Different Blogs and the second one Formula for Effective Commenting state a lot of great tips. This is the condensed list of what I gathered from them both:

1. Find similar blogs so you can create relevant links and/or relevant traffic.
2. Add to the conversation, don’t just say “Nice Post”.
3. Only link to your blog or site when it makes sense.
4. Be different or intelligent when you comment.
5. Ask questions when commenting.  .
6. Answer questions that are asked.
7. Object appropriately, remember comments are moderated.
8. Join the conversation.
9. Keep comments short.
10. Be early in the comments.
11. Respond to comments about your comments.
12. Be funny.
13. Be real and genuine when commenting.
14. Keep commenting.
15. Keep a consistent identity so that you can build a reputation and people will recognize and trust your comments.

So the key to effective commenting is to comment in conjunction with social networking.

If you leverage other peoples friends and users by commenting on the things that they share, you can also gain a tremendous amount of traffic and potentially a larger following.