Thursday, October 5th, 2006...5:42 pm by Leroy Brown
The power of comments
Comments are one of the single most powerful tools at your disposal. And no, I’m not talking about you leaving comments on other people’s blogs – although that is important too. I’m talking about getting as many comments as possible on your own blog. I know what you’re thinking – if it was that easy, I’d already get hundreds of comments. And you’re right – it isn’t easy. But you do have some say-so. You can increase the number of comments you get – sometimes drastically. It’s all in the way you post.
Remember, some times of posts naturally garner more comments than others. If you write a 500 word essay and call it a post, chances are that 90% of your readers fell asleep or left before finishing it, and those that did finish it learned everything they needed to know, and thus have no reason to comment. You need to stay concise – short and simple. If you leave some things unsaid, you may end up with a few questions in your comments.
Question posts are also very powerful comment gatherers. If your entire post is a big question, you can expect more comments. However, you can end quite a few of your posts with questions – that works too. If you ask your readers a question, there’s a good chance they’ll answer. The more comments you get, the more active your blog is, and the more readers you know that you have locked in. A repeat reader is very powerful indeed, as he’s likely to tell his friends about your blog. Word of mouth advertising is still one of the best ways to get known.
What are you doing on your own blog to get as many comments as possible?
4 Comments
October 10th, 2006 at 3:26 am
Good post, Leroy. I would love for more of my readers to leave comments. I have to think of more ways to draw them out…
October 10th, 2006 at 3:31 am
[...] I was reading The power of comments over at Blogging Blog and decided to run a little experiment. It’s not much of one, really, but I would like to see how many lurkers out there (and regular readers, of course) will leave a comment on this post. If you’re new to this blog, feel free to introduce yourself. I definitely check out the blogs of people who stop by and generally promote articles on their blogs that I find interesting. So, leave a comment and let us know you’re alive! Share this post:These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. [...]
October 11th, 2006 at 7:54 am
Sometimes you just have to ask for it – like you did on your last post.
Something I may try once I gain some more readership ( if I ever find the time to develop this site more, yikes! ) is a contest of sorts. Maybe, the person who leaves the most relevent comments over the course of a month or two wins a prize of some kind. Who knows, I haven’t really thought it through. Just something to mull over.
October 11th, 2006 at 1:46 pm
Good ideas. I was thinking of including surveys to start with.
I love the interaction with my readers, but that post I did begging for comments only got me about 4 so far (the rest are my replies). That’s out of close to 100 uniques a day.
Contests are a cool idea, too, if your blog is making some money for you or if you have something to offer, like an advance copy of a book. I know a writer who has contests like that all the time and he also sends things out for free to promote his work. He has a pretty good readership of his blog, too.
Leave a Reply