The comments section of your blog is what makes it the interactive platform that it is. It’s a powerful way for your readers to connect with you, the blogger, and for you to get back to them with a personal touch.
The more comments your posts get, the more growth your blog experiences in terms of readers and subscribers. But if you look around, you’ll find that not many bloggers are doing much to get more readers to comment on their posts.
So the question this brings us to is – what can you do to increase the number of comments? How do you get your blog audience involved? In the following article we discuss a few effective tips to help you do just that:
1) Make it easy for them: Internet users have a short attention span, and that applies to your blog readers as well. Which means they don’t have much time. Therefore you should try to make the commenting process as painless and easy as possible. Asking your readers to register or fill in captcha is a big turn-off.
2) Don’t forget the power of asking: That’s right – if you want more comments flowing in, all you gotta do is ask. Finish your blog post with a question or two. Ask your readers to share their opinion, views or ideas. Get them to participate.
3) Respond back: When your readers see you responding back to comments, they get encouraged to share their thoughts. Everybody wants to be heard, and acknowledged. People want to build a relationship with the blogger via commenting. So by intelligently responding back to comments, you’ll automatically get more readers to participate.
4) Give them a reason to comment: One of the reasons why some blog posts fail to attract comments is because they simply lack the punch. They don’t give their readers a reason to comment. So yes, the quality of your content has to be good enough to stir up your reader’s’ thoughts. Make it compelling enough and don’t make it dry.
5) Touch their emotions: People love standing up for something. They like speaking up when they feel emotionally connected to an issue. So touching the emotions of your readers will have them talking, debating, etc. This may not be possible with each and every post of yours, but do it when you can.
6) Write open ended posts: While giving away lots of quality information is good, you should also keep something to yourself. Saying everything on the topic may not leave room for your readers to express their opinion. You want to hold back some of your ideas so that you can let your readers comment and share theirs.
7) Don’t publish too often: The frequency of your publishing posts does affect the number of comments you receive. When you create and publish lots of content, your readers may simply get overwhelmed. So by bringing down your publishing rate, you can actually boost your blog’s engagement level and hence get more comments.
What do you do to get more comments on your blog? Please do share your experience below.
