Last week as a gift to you, Patsi and I hosted a free Q&A teleseminar about business blogging (replay here if you missed it) and received dozens of excellent questions from newbie and advanced bloggers alike. One question was sent to us a couple of days ago and warrants a blog post and comment from you...Maria asks:
I have a question about commenting on other people's blogs. Sometimes I find a blog that deals with my topic (usually from a Google Alert). But then I look at the date of the blog post and see it's from one year ago. Or two years ago. Sometimes even from 4 months ago.
Do you see any benefit to posting a comment on an older post? Do you have a date cut-off as to what you will or will not comment on?
Excellent question and one I had not really ever considered. Blogging is about having conversations and interactions between the author and reader. I personally don't think the date of the blog post is relevant if the conversation is still relevant. In fact this may be a good opportunity to restart a previous conversation about a subject that may have evolved since the original date of the post.
The benefit to you, the commentor, is that you are engaging with the author. If the material is evergreen (not dated or expired), then the conversation is still worth pursuing. You may develop a new friend, colleague, partner or client just by taking that step to comment.
We frequently link to older posts as reference to new material. So we're not surprised when someone comments on older content. If there's value there, then it's worth having the conversation.
What say you? Any thoughts or ideas about commenting on "old" posts? Any reason NOT to comment or to have a cut off date for blog post comments?
