Your Inbound Spam Can Make You More Effective Blogger, Drive Traffic to Your Site

The best thing about having done all sorts of internet marketing and promotion over the last 10 years is that I picked up a few tricks along the way that they don't teach you anywhere. This article covers one of those tricks and I hope you find this information useful, I certainly used it to great success.

You see, not all spam is created equal and you need to know the good from the bad or you'll just be inviting trouble. However, knowing what to delete and what to keep can do many positive things for you.

So what can good spam do for me, you might ask?

Well, the right kind of spam can give the impression that your brand new blog already has a thriving community. This is something that you desperately need if you're going to get anywhere as a blogger.

Now, if you're just blogging for the fun of it then you can stop reading right now but if you're blogging for other reasons, be they personal or financial, then keep reading.

Many noobs, as well as seasoned bloggers and webmasters, make the mistake of just deleting everything that Akismet (or other spam filter) considers as spam.

There are three categories of spam and you should be aware which one's are the completely parasitic garbage spam messages and which ones are the ones that can cause your blog or website to flourish.

First lets have a look at a couple examples of garbage spam that should be deleted with great prejudice.

This example shows the most common type of spam that everyone recieves on a daily basis the spelling errors are intentional to lend authenticity to the example:

"We deliver Viagra cheaply and anonlymously just go to blahblahbla.com "

Another Example of spam might look something like this:

"www.blahblahblah.com tis are the bestest deals"

Obviously the two example above have absolutely no value and are completely useless. They should be flushed down the toilet immediately. They offer you nothing and if they were to sit in your comments section they would only function as a parasite. Furthermore, the two examples of spam can even hurt your site with Google. If the big G keeps seeing these types of comments on your blog they may very well rank you down instead of up and that's something you really don't want. What You do want is to do everything in your power to not get sand-boxed by Google.

As I'd already mentioned, there is a type of spam that can be beneficial to your blog or website and this type of spam will not get you in trouble with the all mighty Google. Let me illustrate the types of spam that can inject some life into your blog or website.

"Hi, I really enjoy reading your blog and I agree with you on this issue. If you get a chance check out my site: LINK"

"I read your blog post on using blog spam effectively and I couldn't agree more. This is exactly the same way I got my blog off the ground but I wasn't aware anyone else used the same trick. Nice post and good site."

As you can clearly see by the second two example is they are also trying to get an extra link in there message post and it is entirely possible that getting that link posted is their only purpose in coming to your site. That's fine by me as this sort of spam doesn't read like spam but rather it resembles a normal comment about your article by a member of a thriving community that your site has built.

The funny thing is that Akismet would undoubtedly toss all the example spam in the dustbin and that would be that. At least on it's default setting Akismet removes anything and everything that's even remotely questionable.

So how is this type of spam useful to you?

Well, lets first make a distinction between example the last two examples.

The example next to last, although it could be a sincere statement, feels very generic and frankly does come across as a sort of "catch all" type of post that is trying to not look like spam. Although this is the less desirable form of spam it will work for your purposes, especially if your blog is brand new and hasn't been on the internet long enough to stir up it's own user group.

The last example, on the other hand, is the best example of spam. It has clearly been typed by hand and is very specific to the information in the article. It leaves a lot of room for doubt as to whether it is in fact a spam post. One certain way to be sure is if they left a hyper-link in the proper space provided by WordPress as well as putting a tiny little link in the body of the comment.

Whenever I get a comment on my blog that resemble the last example of spam, I don't touch it, I don't edit it, I don't do anything to it whatsoever. Providing that it doesn't link to any illegal materials I allow it to sit in my comments section.

I think most of you are probably starting to catch on. For those of you who aren't sure how this type of spam benefits you, please keep reading.

Anyone who's reading this article has also read their fair share of blogs. Tell me honestly, after you're done with the actual article do you ever read the comments in order to see what others are saying and to help form your own opinion about the material you've just read? Because I almost always like to read the comments that people leave behind. Some of them are profound, some are profane and some are darn funny.

In short, the comments that live on your blog pages are the "community" of your website. The mere fact that those comments are one your site in the first place indicates to others that your site is worth checking out because there are so many people expressing their points of view about your articles.

You see, we humans are a social type of beastie, we like to huddle in groups and throw feces I mean ideas around. We like to share exactly what is on our minds and we want as large of an audience as possible.

It makes us feel our worth when we get to voice some idea, even if it's a horribly bad idea we still want and need a group to witness our efforts.

This is where this type of spam comes in handy, it gives the illusion that your website is not floating in dark and distant cyberspace, cold and devoid of all life, rather the exact opposite. The spam makes any future visitors to your site feel like they have stumbled upon a community and this make the new visitor more likely to leave his own comment as well as bookmarking your blog/site.

There is nothing like having a thriving blog, because once you get that initial spark of comments to grow into a flame of core community users which then, with a little bit of luck and hard work, explodes into an inferno of new visitors and site members and if you're selling something or promoting something or even if you think you might want to promote a service or product in the future nothing is worth more than a core user group.

And all of this because of a few spam messages, who would have thought.