Novice Bloggers

Proven ways to Encourage Comments in Your Blog Part I

Posted on 24. Nov, 2009 by Senthil Ramesh in Blogging for beginners, SEO, Tweaking Tuesdays

Its high time, we have so many blogs evolving and making innovations at their blog to make their readers stay. So in this competitive blogosphere, it is a must to have our readers return to our blog often and get the most of it. Also it will be very useful, if you get more comments and interactions for your blog as it makes your work appreciated and make your blog noticed. Having more comments at your blog can always give an impression the article reaches the audience well.

What you get by Frequent and More Comments:

Everybody loves new things and search engines do love it the most. They always look at those sites which is updated frequently, has fresh content. Getting a comment on your blog, makes your article stay updated. This can make the search engines to crawl more and get your site’s contents to its users more frequently.

How to have more comments?

So simple to say but hard to make (read it not so hard). Yes, many of them just skip some blog posts immediately, if we don’t like its typography, formatting or visual appearance. Even words count matters for a blog. All your good content goes in vain, if you are not good at the above points. So making the readers to take interest at your post and make them comment is a daunting task (don’t be afraid, lets fix it soon). But you can do some thing from your part to get most of the users to comment at your blog posts. And yes, I am sure these things made my readers to comment more. Hence the title, Proven ways. We preach only after we pratctise.

1. Content Matters as usual:

As usual, lets say the old adage, every blogger or webmaster keeps in mind, “Content is the king”. Great contents always prove to be worthy. Always make good contents that strikes deep inside readers’ mind and let them think of the other possible ways for your thoughts . The more your content is thought provoking, the more you get comments.

2.Have contests and make them comment more

Though this point can make readers to make it a must to comment thing, in little time it can get more interactions. You might notice that all the contests in this blog, asks the users to leave comments and let us notify their efforts made for the contests. We had a good response for this.

3.Provide a topic encouraging interaction

I have seen some blogs with good number of comments, has not much content but it would have encouraged the users to interact and give their opinions. A good example of this kind is here. Through this kind of posts you can always make some interactions at your blog and also make other readers to rate others comments. This can make the users to get involved in others’ views too. And your readers can feel they are valuable to you.

4. Encourage comments with top commentators widget:

This is a old news. Too many people are already following this. If you own a wordpress blog, you can add a top commentator widget in your blog, providing a space for users to get listed. People always would like to listed somewhere, why not you give them a space at your blog to encourage them to comment more. Top Commentators widget lists those who commented most in your blog in a given time.

In recent days, there is also one more of use of this plugin where we can have some contests like “Who comments the most – Wins” and give the results up to date using this widget. Here is one of the contests going on in our blog to reward the one who comments more.

5. Reply as soon as possible:

I have seen in some of the blogs, that the authors don’t respond to users’ comments soon or never respond at all. We never like such blogs where we are simply ignored. Basically, every human being like to be appreciated. In those blogs, we feel like our voices go unheard and our questions go unanswered. This can make a negative impression and may even stop the readers to visit the blog again. I personally don’t feel like commenting in such blogs. Always put yourselves in Reader’s shoes. Make replies to their comments. Whatever they have commented, let it be queries, feedbacks, suggestions or criticisms, always make a reply. Even a small “Thanks for visiting the site” can make the users to feel good.

You might have noticed, we always reply here at our blog as soon as the user comments, and we will be keeping eye on the comments of the posts all the time.

Also make sure you check the spam folder often, since sometimes many of user’s comments may be blocked by Akismet or any anti-spam plugins as spam. This had happened to me once in DailySEOBlog, as I used a co.cc at the website’s place. I have then contacted Mani, (owner of DailySEOBlog) and requested to do the needful and yes he has approved it afterwards.

6. Add an interactive reply for the user comment:

Not all of the readers can understand all of your points in your posts. They may not be clear about something and also not all people like to provide feedbacks for the post or comment about it after finished reading the post. They may simply leave the blog leaving a comment “nice post” or “thanks for the information” etc.., Its now your turn to make it more interactive. You can reply to the comments whether they have any queries or clarifications and feedbacks on the post. This can make the users feel they are valued more and we are open to their thoughts. It may or may not bring you fruitful results at the beginning, but it long run it builds a relation between you and the users and bring fruitful results.

Thats it. We will be giving six more points in the next part. Is that all, do you feel we can add something more to encourage more comments. If so, please share in the comments section.

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Related posts:

1. Proven Ways to Encourage Comments in your blog Part II
2. Top Commentators Contest at NoviceBloggers
3. 6 ways to have contests on your blog
4. Which is the best post you read?
5. 5 Dont’s in Blog Commenting

Tags: Blogging for beginners, comments, readers