A blog is supposed to be a dynamic website; a place where blog owner and readers can come together in a single community designed to offer communication and the relaying of thoughts. For the new blog, and even for some of the more established blogs, getting readers to participate in discussions and leaving comments can prove a difficult challenge. Take heart, though, because it is possible by following a few guidelines to improve blog reader participation.
1. Make It Easy — Don’t Prevent Readers From Commenting
It’s a surprisingly common mistake; some of the best written blogs on the net have one underlying problem – the design of their blog deters readers from commenting. Ensure that comments are enabled on all but the most select posts. Place the comment box in an obvious position and where feasible don’t force your readers to register before they can join the discussion.
2. Make It Dynamic – Add Widgets
One of the greatest benefits of using WordPress for a blog is the incredible community of software authors that has developed around the platform. Make the most of capable and willing software authors and add widgets that encourage people to comment. Let your readers use their own avatars. Add a Top Commentator widget. Display the most recent comments in a prominent position.
3. Make It Clean – Control Spam
Spam is a problem in virtually every way on the Internet and not least on blogs. Spammy comments tend to be long-winded, contain irrelevant and often offensive links, and they WILL almost certainly detract from the value of your blog. Akismet is a highly effective plug-in to help control spam but only if you enable it and use it.
4. Make It Fun — Provide Engaging Content
This should be a given for any blog writer but it is vital to remember. Well written, informative, entertaining and engaging content will naturally encourage readers to leave comments. The better the writing, the more natural the content, the more likely that others will want to become a part of the discussion that it starts.
5. Make It Worthwhile – Provide Incentive To Your Readers
Think about your readers and offer them incentive to leave a post on your blog. This doesn’t mean you should give a gift to everybody that posts, but blog competitions are a possibility. Establish fun games in your posts that encourage people to partake. Let your users link out to their site using their username link. By giving readers an incentive to post you greatly increase the chance of them doing so.
6. Make It Even More Worthwhile – Ask For Guidance, Seek Advice
A lot of blog readers love nothing more than to provide their own gems of wisdom on somebody else’s blog. Ask for advice, ask questions, and seek guidance from your readers. Not only can this help you ascertain the level of knowledge that your readers have but it also means that authoritative and knowledgeable blog readers will become really involved in your site.
7. Make It Obvious – Add Your CTA To The End Of Your Post
Every web page should have a clear Call To Action (CTA) and the same is true of blog posts. With e-commerce websites that means encouraging visitors to purchase items, with affiliate sites it means encouraging them to click a link and visit an affiliate website, or: affiliate marketing. The end of your blog post is the beginning of your interaction with readers so ask a question, encourage readers to comment.
8. Make It A Discussion – Respond And Join In
When somebody does leave a comment that warrants a response make sure you respond. Don’t use stock answers, try to engage your new community member even further by striking up a conversation. Other blog lurkers may find the incentive to join the discussion and will almost certainly appreciate the personal attention that you pay to your blog readers.
9. Make It Mutual – Visit Members’ Sites
When members leave valuable and useful comments and they leave a link to their own website, visit it and have a look. If there’s a comment to a relevant post left, then comment on the post on the reader’s blog. By showing this kind of mutual appreciation for a comment you can greatly improve your reputation with all of your members and will almost certainly have made a new connection with the specific user.
10. Make It Personal – Give Your Readers What They Want
Use site analytics to see how readers are arriving on your site. Consider the keywords that people use to find your blog and your blog posts. Better still, ask them. Your blog is the perfect place to ask readers what they are looking for and once you’ve done that you can provide it in your own words, offering your own solution, and to your own ends. By providing information that interests your readers you can be sure that somebody will comment as long as you have enough readers.
11. Blog Reader Engagement
Blogs can be a great way to make an income or to promote a business but to manage one properly you need to do more than write posts. Engaging your readers is a good way to develop a community that can benefit you now and in the future.
How do You Encourage Participation?
I have listed 11 great methods I use to encourage reader participation on my own blog, now I want to encourage you to participate in this community and share your methods for getting readers to interact in your community!.
38 Discussions
I want to add another point:
12. Give them reward:
Make your comment section DO FOLLOW.
Reward your readers with a backlink. If you use CommentLuv wordpress plugin, it would be better like this Blogussion. Your readers will be able to show their latest post and will be interested to leave a comment.
Eunus Hosen
Eunus Hosen´s last blog ..Blogging Tips- 7 Things Your Blog Must Have Enabled
I agree. Adding CommentLuv, and especially dofollow, will also open up to tons of spam comments – so it does take a little bit of extra work to moderate but I still think it’s worth it in the end.
Klaus @ TechPatio´s last blog ..iFlicks- Easy Video Conversion on Mac with Metadata Support Review
one more point…make it a controversy…..
now do not go very deep in there…write something that is in decent language and you are sure will raise enough discussions….i did it once (it was a wonderful experience) and got huge comments…
NOT IN NUMBER BUT IN QUALITY
Tushar´s last blog ..What is the Hype About BRANDING
Blogussion is actually the first site I’ve seen with CommentLuv on and I’m a convert.
Controversy is OK with blogs on certain topics but I wouldn’t encourage it too much for small business or indeed large corporation blogs. You live by your word and all that.
The tips you have shared are great. Moreover I would Like to share my information about it:
1. Always try to improve your posts readability by adding visual aids with the simple text.
2. Link Building of the Blog should be done with effective planning, For example Target the right audience will have impact of more potential customers coming to your blog.
3. Design and Develop your blog in according to the web 2.0 trends. For example Design and Develope comments Section effectively and attractive. Place tag Clouds, sitewide links etc..
Regards
Jason Smith@Web Design company´s last blog ..19 Marvelous Apple Inspired Website Designs
Excellent points.
I think asking a question at the end of the post really makes a difference. It makes it easy for people to comment on the post. Sometimes there is no room left for comments.
Another method for getting readers to interact in your community:
Using KeywordLuv plugin, so that commenter can have a keyword of their choice and get a keyword rich anchor-text.
Kindest,
Nabeel
I’m with Eunus on this… rewarding your readers is another great way. Particularly with CommentLuv
*Does the ‘I love CommentLuv Dance.*
What you said about “making it mutual,” too is critical I think. Gives it a more “community” feel when the visit is reciprocated!
Stacey Cavanagh´s last blog ..A Little Social Media Rhyme Terribly Geeky-
They tie in well together too – CommentLuv makes it a lot easier (not that it’s that difficult in the first place but every second counts) to click through and read.
This was really helpful thanks for posting it. I have only recently become interested in audience interaction and it has been a great experience so far.
The biggest lesson I got from this article is the idea of asking your audience for advice or ideas. I typically do so much talking and lesson sharing of my own that some of members might feel like I don’t want to learn. This is definitely not the case. I am an emerging business owner and I am trying to learn as much as humanly possible.
In my next blog post I am absolutely going to ask for ideas and input on some of my latest ideas/challenges. I am curious to see if comment participation increases because commenters will now have a chance to shine and share some very cool ideas.
I thought your 11 points covered it very well but I may return to post some new ideas once I see more success in terms of comments on my blog.
Justin Popovic´s last blog ..Who Supports Your Dreams… My Biggest Supporter
i agree with Eunes, making your site dofollow will certainly keep your readers coming back to your site.
Paul/ Entertainment tonight´s last blog ..Comparative ratings of ABS CBN -amp GMA
Really great post,
Making it obvious is one of the most important things to do, you should have a great call to action because this will help increase the engagement on your blog.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Onibalusi Bamidele´s last blog ..How to Arouse Engagement On Your Blog – Get More Comments and Retweets
Sometimes it’s difficult for the blogger to remember that they have to be a little bit of marketer thrown in for good measure too. You wouldn’t catch a marketer putting up any web page without some form of CTA in there.
Nice list.. making your blog a place people feel they will learn something day in and day out is what you need to do. The more they learn the more they will be willing to participate.
John Paul Aguiar´s last blog ..How I Got 253 Twitter ReTweets On 5 Posts
…and the more they keep coming back. Bring it.
You included on of the most overlooked ways to encourage comments. That is to visit the blogs of your visitors and leave them comments tool.
As bloggers we should never underestimate the power of reciprocity. It can go a long way to ensuring that commentators return to leave more comments for us too.
Blog Angel a.k.a. Joella´s last blog ..Followers On Twitter Find The Ones That Really Matter
It is a community we’re building after all.
This is the one thing I really seem to struggle with, I’m not sure if it’s because of the niche of my blogs or what. Maybe I just have very quiet readers :p
I love commentluv on blogs though, the only problem is it doesn’t work with Disqus….. Or do you think that the regular wordpress comments is a better option?
Robert @ Techinfo-4u.com´s last blog ..Naughty Bear- The Review
Like I say, I’ve not really seen CommentLuv before this and if you do use it then you will have to keep a more stringent eye out for irrelevant posts and the usual tripe that spammers tend to put up but otherwise I’d go with CommentLuv.
A must read article for bloggers..I am impressed with this article…
Jitendra´s last blog ..WordPress 30 released
Awesome tips man!
You’re definitely right about making sure your blog isn’t filled up with spam. I know that I personally don’t visit blogs if I scroll down and see a bunch of offensive comments hanging out. Haha. Nice post
CJ
CJ’s last blog ..25 Hot Article Sites – List of Top Article Directories To Increase Your Site’s PageRank!
Here’s another one (well maybe 1A): require no more than three fields (name, email, and web site). I just visited a site which had 10 fields (!) required to leave a comment (including my occupation, title. city, state, and country). I suppose it cuts down on spam, but it’s a big site and there are hardly any responses to the posts!
Jodi Kaplan´s last blog ..Fame-
Yeah, 1A is a definite. As it is, giving my name and email address can seem like a bind if I’m not seriously into posting something.
Thanks for giving us a good post i was looking for this stuff for a while keep up a good work.
justin´s last blog ..A Change is Necessary in Order to Grow
Nice. What more can I say but to implement the suggestions here. As real estate bloggers we rarely receive comments, perhaps a change of direction is in order, eh!
Colleen´s last blog ..Three Rivers Community Roundtable’s 2010 Summer Workshop
Different blogs and different topics always elicit different response levels. Try and find a real tight niche for one of your blogs and then try to make sure you encourage repeat visits – the more targeted the traffic and the more loyal your readers become the more likely they will comment.
hey matt,
you have provided good tips here. honestly speaking as i was reading your post, i was looking through my blog…=P
I suppose the best way to ultimately encourage such engagement is to first cultivate ‘selfless’ character..
Most often times , what i realize about some bloggers online is that they are afraid *example* content thieves, negative comments, backlink thieves and as such, they tend to just ‘close up’ everything from the comment box to having registered participant only etc. just so they could ultimately stop all of it.
i suppose working online at one point or another, such agendas may arise but this shouldn’t prevent you from taking the ‘easy’ way out. if you do, so will your ‘readers’ .. out of your blog of course.
keep up the good post coming,matt.
cheers
Febap Liew | Making Money Online Today´s last blog ..How To Set Up Your Own Internet Business – Part 3
You get out what you put in. A little extra effort managing spam means you get more engagement from your readers so you get extra out of it.
#6. Make It Even More Worthwhile?–?Ask For Guidance, Seek Advice – has always been one of my favorites. As you say, it’s human natire for anyone to want to give their 2cents worth.
Not just to the blogger either, install threaded comments and you’re sure to get plenty of opinions on others opinions and so forth.
Dennis Edell @ Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..I Figured it Out! Plus – I Need HELP Locating a Plugin
Threaded comments is definitely a good point. Get your readers/commenters to do some of the hard work for you – user generated content (even comments) is always good.
I wouldn’t say “for you” much “in addition to”.
The blogger should still reply to every comment that warrants one.
IF one commenter does answer another “fully’, then yes, you may perhaps leave that one alone.
Dennis Edell | Direct Sales Marketing´s last blog ..You’re Distracting Me – I’m Unsubscribing
Thanks for this great article! I’ll use this tips.
Very good tips. I will also try that CommentLuv addon. I think I like it. Haven’t noticed this yet since I’m not one to comment, more on the “how many visits.” But yeah a discussion would be very nice.
Hey there Matt,
I particularly liked your tip about giving incentives to readers, I’ve actually thought of comment contest instantly. It’s also good to get the juice out from your readers, in which you can organize a comment contest for a single post and the main criteria will focus on the most sensible comment made
Everything said here are useful, it’s just on how a blogger will implement these tips.
Regards,
Jason
Some very good tips. I always check out the sites of people who comment on my blogs and will more often than not comment on their blogs.
I am always trying to think of new ways to encourage comments, including making my blogs do-follow.
Dean Saliba´s last blog ..Recycling Old Content
I have recently started using a call to action to get more comments, it really does work too. I don’t just say “leave a comment” I always try to encourage people to share their thoughts, ask them questions or at the very least ask them if they agree or disagree.
People naturally want to answer questions, so this is a great way to encourage feedback.
I have found that doing something a bit different helps to get your readers involved. Rather than writing blog posts about a topic, it helps to run polls, or experiments, something that will peak the interest of your readers and encourage them to come back.
Mark Johnson´s last blog ..The One Keyword Experiment – Day 1
Just ask your readers to do something and they will do what you’ve asked.
Reza Winandar´s last blog ..5 Types of Comments That Attract Attention
I suppose the best way to ultimately encourage such engagement is to first cultivate ‘selfless’ character..
what i realize about some bloggers online is that they are afraid “example” content thieves, negative comments, backlink thieves and as such, they tend to just ‘close up’ everything from the comment box to having registered participant only etc. Just so they could ultimately stop all of it.
Awesome points I agreed with you i will follow this great tips to update my blogging style.
seospidy@Seo Services Company´s last blog ..Search Engine Optimization SEO