This is a guest post by Lee Ka Hoong from MyBlog2Day.
Comments are an important element in a blog, a blog without comments is like a cage without birds, which is not fun at all. Blog comments are important for a blog as readers would share their experiences and opinions regarding your article topic. Therefore, you may be able to learn something new from the comments.
When you visit a blog and see that there are less or no comments on every single post, what will you feel? You might feel that the quality of content is poor and doesn’t attract anymore to leave a comment, and then you’ll leave too. It’s important for us to do something to increase the participation rate in our blog, it adds value to our blog.
Here are the 10 ways to increase comments on your blog:
1. Simple And Useful Content
When writing a blog post, make it simple and easy to understand. If you write something in too much detail and technical, it definitely pisses off your reader because it’s complicated for them to leave a comment and share their thought.
2. Call To Action
Ask a question at the end of your article. Shoot a question to your readers and ask for their opinions or ask them to answer your question. Again, make the question as simple as you can.
3. Comment On Related Blogs
All of us know that blog commenting is a way to drive traffic, build backlinks and brand. You might know the concept of “you comment and I’ll comment back”. When you leave a comment in a related niche blog, the blog owner may be interested to know who his reader is and what his blog is. This is what I used to do to see who my reader is, I’ll leave a comment if the blog has article that attracts me.
4. Hold Blog Commenting Contest
This is hot and many blogs are holding similar contest on their blog. As what you can see in SmartBloggerz, Sushant held a “Commenting Idol Contest” few months ago and the contest page itself received up to 369 comments. All his following blog post received at least 100 comments each. This is a good way to increase participation rate in your blog, but you have to really control and modify the quality of comments left on the post, it may take your lot of time away.
5. Make Your Blog Dofollow
People love dofollow blog because they can get one way dofollow backlinks for their blog to improve the search engine rankings. In fact, there is no harm to make your blog dofollow as long as you control the quality of outgoing link, just make sure there is no outgoing link to spam site, then it would be safe.
6. CommentLuv WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv is a popular wordpress plugin. When your reader leaves a comment on your blog, then the plugin will track and display the latest blog post of your reader’s blog at the end of his/her comment. Therefore, your reader would receive a backlink to his post plus some traffic through the exposure. It encourages your reader to leave comment.
7. KeywordLuv WordPress Plugin
Nowadays, blog owners are used to modify each comment left on their blog and they ignore commentator who uses keyword in the name field. KeywordLuv allows commentators to get a keyword backlink in their comment in the form – “YourName@YourKeyword”; it improves the search engine ranking for that particular keyword.
8 . Top Commentator WordPress Plugin
It’s widely used by many bloggers on blogosphere, this is a plugin which shows a list of commentators who leave the most comments on the blog, as what you can see in the sidebar of this blog. Usually links in top commentator widgets are dofollow.
9. Build A Community
Build a community in your niche and you could get your readers coming back to leave a comment again and again. Of course, building a community is tough but it’s not an impossible task. You can try to help any bloggers to resolve their problems when they have doubt, you would definitely get the reader to stick with your blog.
10. Reward Your Readers Monthly
You may do it with the list of top commentator. You may reward the top 3 commentators in the list of top commentator some prizes every month, such as cash or banner advertising in your blog. As we know, people love free prizes especially cash.
Wrap Up
There are many ways through which you can increase the participation rate in your blog, these are what I did on my blog and I found them very useful and effective. Quality content is still the main key to make a reader to read the full article and leave comment.
Do you find these ways effective to increase comments? What other method that you use to increase comment on your blog?
[Admin Note: Do check my article – “15 Plugins To Make Your WordPress Comment System Better” for improving the experience of your blog’s commenting system. ]
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• how to get a blog following
It also depends on what kind of blog you run, the niche etc 🙂 If you have a blog where the goal is to teach people how to do (advanced) stuff, it will have to be technical.
But most of the time, I agree with your points. Most blogs should easily be suited for comments as well.
.-= Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..Twitter Bug: Force People To Follow You =-.
@Klaus,
Yea it depends on the niche of the blog too. If it’s a blogging niche blog, then you should try to write in the natural way and don’t use too technical sentences or words in the article, it may make your readers bored and run away.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
Technical material can be written in more engaging, accessible, or simple ways, though – it doesn’t have to make your readers’ eyes glaze over. You can also break the “lessons” into digestible chunks instead of one very long post. (I write very long posts. I write very long comments, too. Sometimes. 🙂 But I try to keep the more technical posts shorter and more straightforward. The longer ones are usually more conversational in tone and maybe meant to be read in one leisurely sitting, or bookmarked for later.
your points work, people will make comments for many reasons..
1.most times when they have something to gain from doing so
or
2. when what you wrote is so awesome they have no choice but to comment.
.-= mk akan´s last blog ..My First 7 Guest Posts On Other Blogs =-.
@mk akan,
That’s why the tactic of rewarding the commentators work very well. As I mentioned, people love cash or prizes! 😀
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
Sensible 10 tips for raising commentaries activity. From my own experience can be complemented by the creation of questions at the end of fasting increases the desire to respond. The importance of the comments is still in the search engines see them as a unique content and raising the status of the post.
.-= retag´s last blog ..BS PLayer 2.53 =-.
@rataq,
You’re right, that’s what we called “Call To Action”. I used to ask a simple question or two at the end of every article I wrote, as well as this post. When your post hang there for quite some times and it receives a comment after a few days, Google will crawl it again and your article get live, that would help in search engine ranking for the article itself.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
CommentLuv and KeywordLuv are like crack to commenters. They just can’t stop coming back!
And great shout on the call to action front.
@Andy,
The combination of commentluv, keywordluv, dofollow and top commentator works pretty well! People who wants to get one way dofollow backlink just can’t stop coming back and leaving comments, to get into the list of Top Commentator. You may try it too Andy. 😉
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
11 – Be known for having good guest posters.
A couple of my guest posters on DSWM gained triple digit comments. 🙂
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Warning: 8 Posts Coming Back to Back =-.
@Dennis,
Yea you’re right. If your guest posters could write some interesting article with eye catching title, then for sure you’ll get more comments. If the guest poster could come up and reply comments from readers, then that might be great! Some of my guest posters didn’t do that, so the post has only a few comments.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
One of my simple rules for guest posters is that they have to return to reply to comments on their articles.
.-= Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..Web Income Experiments DotCom Wins Hands-Down! =-.
Solid tips.
I like to make sure to respond to commentors the best I can and generally visit their site and take a browse around, read some content and make a few comments.
Call to actions are great because it’ll help drive people to comment on your blog because it sets up the stage for them.
.-= Murlu´s last blog ..Techniques To Unlock Your Creativity And Innovation =-.
@Murlu,
Yes Murlu “call to action” works pretty well in getting people to leave a comment. I’m doing that for most of my post and most of them receive good number of comments.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
Write Useful Content..
For example, write post about troubleshooting common technical problems.. But yeah, don’t be too technical, otherwise readers would not easily comprehend what you write..
@Joliber,
Useful content works too, but try to write in natural way and don’t be too technical (As what you said) and readers might be complicated to leave a comment.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
Yes nice input. All are the important point for get more commentator. Another great point is that the more valuable comment you make on other blog the more commentator you will get on your blog.
.-= chandan@work at home blog´s last blog ..7 Best Work At Home Marketplace For Freelancer =-.
@Chandan,
That’s the concept of “You comment and I’ll comment back”, but that works too.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
I think too many blogger think there blog post are one way conversations. I really like to see bloggers get involved with their blogs including commenting and answering questions. It really is about building your community and some just don’t get it.
@McKremie,
Blog commenting would be one of the ways to build your brand too. We should leave genuine comment and also help answering some questions, you may gain trust from the owner as well as the commentator.
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
I think building a community is the best way to get real comments (not comment spam) over time. I hate the idea of bribing people to comment, because I really want people to come to my blog for a conversation. You don’t bribe friends to chat. You could pay people to leave spam, of course – or just wait a while, and they’ll do it for free.
Sushant has made a loyal (if someone erratic and sometimes absent) commenter out of me, because he took Infolinks OFF the comments section of his blog, within a day of my complaining about it (http://jahangiri.us/news/2009/12/06/ethics-in-blogging/ ). He didn’t have to – I’m not really contributing to his income, and I was a total newcomer to the blog. His response made me feel welcome, and valued, and respected. And that’s how I hope visitors to my blog feel, as well.
.-= Holly Jahangiri´s last blog ..Mother, Touchstone, Friend =-.
@Holly Jahangiri,
Thanks for your valuable comment here Holly, yes you’re right building a community would be better than all the ways listed above. Sushant did that because he showed his respect to his readers and he appreciated the contribution of his readers, I can felt that too. I think that’s the right way to build community.
Well said Holly!
.-= Lee Ka Hoong@Blogger Theme´s last blog ..400 High Quality Photoshop Grunge Brushes =-.
Thank you, Lee Ka Hoong. It certainly keeps people coming back; I’d rather have returning readers and commenters than drive-by commenters who are never seen again. Though the later are just as welcome, if they’re contributing to the conversation and not just spamming my blog. (A few – but very few – are clever enough to have figured this out and put forth the effort. I do read the comments, though, and can tell honest effort from the sort of vague, autogenerated or copy/paste stuff that looks like it might have been revealed in the window of a Magic 8 Ball.)
.-= Holly Jahangiri´s last blog ..WTFM, So You Can RTFM =-.