Every blog comes with comments and pretty much every blogger is basing their success on comments. Sure, they may say they don’t, but when you have no comments you feel like you’re just talking to yourself. So how do you get comments?
1 – Write posts that are conversational and something that people can relate to. If you write posts in a way that there feels like there is no room for discussion, then comments will be harder to get.
My wife is great at making posts people can relate to. She put out a post two years ago when she broke her leg and is closing in on 1000 comments from others that have broken theirs. She’s not a marketer, or a PR person, just an average blogger who happened to write in a way that people felt compelled to comment.
2 – Invite comments. If you put out a top ten post, or go off on a rant, ask uses what they think. Literally put at the end of the post “Do you agree?”, “Do you have any tips to add?” or other questions that are inviting comments.
3 – Make it easy to comment. Don’t ask your users to login, don’t make it difficult to comment via complex spam plugins or anything like that. Make sure the comment box is easy to see and that the fields are big enough to put meaningful comments in. Sometimes comment boxes are so small, visitors are to annoyed to comment.
To test this out, log out of your blog and act like a normal visitor and comment on one of your own posts. Some never see what’s wrong as they never look through the users eyes.
4 – Post one side of a story. If I post about how great one political candidate is, there are many others to follow and tell me how wrong I am or why their candidate is better. This is true in most any industry. I could say Blogger is the best blogging platform ever and I’m sure someone would disagree.
5 – Don’t be mean to those that do comment. Yes, some comments you may not agree with, but be open and willing to accept other thoughts and views. If you are mean to those that comment, no one will want to comment. Meanie.
6 – Moderate comments. Yes, we want to be open and happy to get comments, but that doesn’t mean we want spammy, off topic or just plain mean comments. Delete what is not on topic, edit or remove any inappropriate comments and just keep an eye on what’s happening on your site. After all, is is your site.
Comments not only make the blog owner feel better, but it also makes the blog look more interactive and popular.
As a bonus, comments are indexed and used by search engines and help the page rank. My wife’s 1000 comments are what help her continue to get the amazing exposure. Sure, her post was good, but now she has 1000x the amount of content thanks to the comments.
So what are your tips for getting comments?
I like the new (to me) commentluv feature. It pulls a link to the most recent blog post the commenter has on their blog. It not only lets you find great new blogs but also lets you ad to the incoming links on your blog.
PS – I felt compelled to comment since you asked specifically…:) Great Post!
Writing in 3rd person will make it easier to solicit comments.
Great article! I also agree with Tara I also use the commentluv plugin on my blog to try to get more comments on what I write.
“So what are your tips for getting comments?”
That was a bit of an afterthought!
Very interesting post 🙂
Thank you a lot for nice and useful tips, I found some points new for me. Tspecially impressive for me to show “jne side of a story” – great tactic!