The first rule of getting noticed online appears to be “go comment on a lot of blogs.”

I’ve been trying to increase my online presence this December, so I have been reading all the suggestions that I can find.

Each blogger has a slightly different take on the grand enterprise, but they all agree: comment on related blogs as if you were voting in Chicago: early and often.

Blog comments serve two purposes.

First, for those blogs that allow the links to be followed by search engines, you get credit for links back to your site. This is actually a complicated topic, and I encourage you to learn more over at Jim’s Marketing Blog.

The second benefit is for actual human beings to read your comment and follow that comment back to your (presumably) blog.

That makes sense. Web 2.0 is about the conversation, after all. So I’ve read a lot of blog posts in the past month. And I’ve left a whopping five or six comments. Not a day, total. If you’re to believe all of the advice, then I should have been posting that many before lunch.

But I just haven’t had that much to say. And it just seemed dumb to go spouting “I agree. You’re brilliant” on a bunch of blogs. It seemed like comment spam.

Then this morning, Twitter pointed me to a post titled, “Are You Commenting for Traffic or Relationships?” by Kimberlee Ferrell on Remarkablogger.com.

Ferrell did write an excellent post (no false comment praise here), and it coalesced my thoughts far better than my own mind had accomplished.

So what is the point of commenting? To engage other members of the blogging community. You are building relationships: with the owner of the blog, with the other commenters, and with the other readers of the blog. You are working on the social side of social media. You are establishing yourself as part of the online community.

Web 2.0 must be foremost about conversations. If we’re not interacting — with multiple iterations — then Web 2.0 is merely an illusion. Without genuine conversation, even powerful bloggers are nothing more than traditional media outlets with small audiences.

And my way hasn’t been especially fruitful in driving traffic to this blog (yet?), but I have made one really solid connection that will be intellectually fruitful, and I have arranged two interviews for my 5 Questions feature.

So my ROI exceeds my expectations. I’ve forged new relationships.

But, you see, the thing is, this should not have been news. We got so busy being social that we, perhaps, forgot to be human.

When is it not the case that you should only say meaningful things? Why speak for no reason?

A friend and former co-worker of mine once quipped, “advertising ethics means never telling a lie you don’t have to.”

It’s funny because we’re all familiar with puffery, bait-and-switch, and other less-than-noble practices in this industry.

But more than the George Washington-like notion of not lying, we should reaffirm our commitment to not speaking just to hear ourselves talk.

Practitioners in advertising and public relations work to craft a brand. If you’re online in any professional sense, then you represent your brand.

And whether it’s McDonald’s, Apple, or you, you need to understand your brand. Who are you? What is your personality? Even if you know, take a moment to refresh you memory. It never hurts to be reminded.

And once you know, then make sure that everything you say is on message. Reinforce rather than dilute your brand.

Now, let me backtrack a bit and say that’s not nearly as boardroom MBA jargon-speak as it sounds.

I’m just saying: Be true to yourself. Even if you’re invading social media only to make a quick buck, you’ll do so more quickly with sincere relationships more quickly than fleeting ones.

But hopefully you do value relationships more than receipts!

And although initial hits might not skyrocket the way that you’d hope, those who follow links from diligent, relevant comments are precisely those visitors likely to return.

And long-term success demands repeat visitors.

And this is about relationships. A basic human tendency.

This is simply basic communication science for any brand: even if it’s Brand You.

Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com, Nikolay Kropachev.

This lack of training is little problem for people sharing recipes or documenting the first days of their newborn child. However, many bloggers aspire to make a living at the craft, and financial independence is extremely unlikely for untrained hacks.

The print newspaper is dying a rather fast death, but formal journalism training benefits storytellers. With that said, here are five news tips for Bloggers:

1. Don’t bury the lead

If you pick up the newspaper or call up the New York Times online, you will notice that few stories are told chronologically. That’s because boring stuff usually happens at the beginning. Journalists get to the point. What makes this post interesting? Get that up front, or your readers will move on. In traditional news writing, the first paragraph is called the lead (often spelled “lede” to differential it from the hot liquid metal, lead, from which papers were originally printed).

And good leads contain the most important information.

Embarrassingly, burying the lead came to mind because I got called on it last week by a friend and fellow journalist. D’oh. How could I have been so careless?

2. Write compelling headlines

Clever, well-written headlines draw readers into the story. This was true on newsprint 100 years ago, and it’s true today. Every word counts. Take the time present the most important facts compellingly.

A good headline cannot save a bad post, but a bad headline can prevent a good post from ever being read.

When I worked the copy desk at the Albuquerque Journal, I viewed every headline as a contest — a contest that I wanted to win. Every day I wanted to hear a colleague say, “great headline.”

Most people think that reporters write headlines. They don’t. At best they suggest headlines, but in my experience they don’t even do that. Headlines are written by copy editors, who know the font size and the number of columns that the headline needed to cover. And they have lots of practice at writing good headlines.

Blogs usually have a single-deck headline of a fixed length. Although this is limiting, it is not an excuse for lazy writing (more advice I need to remember, too).

Bottom line: Never, ever write the headline first. The best headlines are written at 10 p.m. when the reporter has been home for four hours. And they are never written before the story.

3. Make every word count

One of the biggest blog problems is excessive prose. Even when newsprint was cheap, there was a fixed newshole. And when it was filled, you stopped. This blog post can stretch to infinity. That’s not an advantage.

As an analogy, consider what a former friend used to say to robust women with bare midriffs.

“Just because they make that in a size 13, honey, doesn’t mean you should wear it.”

Likewise, don’t writer every word that comes to mind because you can.

Try to write tight. Sure there’s endless space, but extra words are bad. You’re probably blogging during spare time, and you don’t have a rim and slot editor to trim fat. Be concise anyway.

4. Add color to your stories

I’m not a gifted writer. On my good days, I am a trained writer who tries hard. When I see a writer use powerful, concrete language, I am moved.

You can feel it when just the right detail is added to a story. What is the single aspect of a person or a situation that is crucial to the reader’s understanding? Find it. Write it.

Remember that a picture is worth, more or less, 1,000 words. Only you can see what you’re trying to say. Fight for exactly the right words to convey that scene to the reader.

5. Avoid adjectives

Excessive adjectives are the comforting crutch of the lazy writer. Sure, even well-trained, dedicated need some colorful descriptive adjectives. But if you’re using a lot of them, then you have simply failed to find the right nouns and verbs (hopefully the humor is not lost in this paragraph).

Mark Twain is reported to have said, “When you can catch an adjective, kill it.”

Did you really need to say, “violent explosion”?

This would supposedly differentiate it from a peaceful explosion.

We may talk of “future plans,” but there’s one adjective too many in that sentence. Unless your time machine surpasses mine, future plans are the only plans.

Catch them and kill them.

So, tell me. What is the sixth blog improving tip that I should have included?

Share your thoughts in the comments.

Learning good writing is not like learning to ride a bicycle (more on clichés another day). Good habits are forgotten. And writing well takes time. Take the time. Your readers will thank you for the investment.

As former friends continue to face layoffs in journalism, I cannot help but cringe over local news being staffed from a continent away.

I checked in with one of his workers in Mysore City in southern India, 40-year-old G. Sreejayanthi, who puts together Pasadena events listings. She said she had a full-time job in India and didn’t think of herself as a journalist. “I try to do my best, which need not necessarily be correct always,” she wrote back. “Regarding Rose Bowl, my first thought was it was related to some food event but then found that is related to Sports field.”

It was once written that all politics are local. I never imagined that the corollary would be that no journalism is local.

The only way this works is if newspapers (whatever form they will take) are some sort of cheap aggregators, and all genuinely local information comes from blogs.

In which case, even a hack coder such as myself can probably write a better program to aggregate news — and do so more cheaply than $7.50 per thousand words.

Sigh.