What makes your established community, committed readers, or frequent visitors leave some sort of response to your blog? It’s because of our quality content, our inviting community, or that we interact with our readers. It’s not because we simply ask for their comments or thoughts. Why not? This gets our community to respond, but it’s not really an urge. Here’s how we can change this.
Please know and understand that I’m trying to allow for you (as a blogger) not to always worry about getting responses on your blog.
What “Urge” I’m Talking About
Surely we bloggers or site owners can tell people to leave a comment, their input, or participate in some discussion. We can still do this by all means, but what if we could do more by asking less?
A community response does not just have to be a comment left on the blog. Remember that
This is what I’m calling the “urge” .
If we can create some sort or type of urge within our frequent, new, or dedicated visitors/readers we’ll get this response naturally. So, I’ve thought about how I could instill some urge in my future community for my blog, instead of just always asking, “what do you think?”
Content Transparency
On our blogs we all talk about a certain topic or niche. Many if not all posts we write and publish for our readers/visitors are to help them to do what will benefit them. Well, many of these posts originate from what we have personally found out or personally believe.
Stand by your content at all times
What if we aren’t doing what we tell others? Questions arise.
Whatever we are telling or talking about in our blogs to our community we all need to be transparent within our own blog (in and out). Now, I know many things we say on our blogs are to help others and since the blogosphere is so huge and diverse they might not actually be for us as the blogger. What we do need to do as the blogger is stand by what we have said, offer reason, and insure the content we produce is of great quality to you and the community.
Remember content is king, but its not pristine with any transparency by us.
Gaining Knowledge or Thought
While having a conversation with a few different people who rarely visit blogs, I gained some useful information on why they would even leave a response on a blog.
The reasons centered around them wanting to leave a response were:
- Adding their own twist because they are passionate about that certain subject
- Providing a case study or story
- Pointing out why they could be missing something again because they are passionate about the subject
These reasons are people that rarely visit a blog and might rarely know who the blogger actually is. Think about it. They probably did a Google Search and found your blog/article.
Building that Influence
Influence is defined as “the action or process of producing effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of another or others”.
We know that many bloggers are talking about the importance to have this influence for you and your community. They are right. Specifically, this importance comes down to your community having the urge to leave their response.
Think about the blogs we visit and seem to always offer our response. We might personally know them. Chances are though that we know of them. And we leave our response because we look up to them, take their content to heart, and want to show our continued support or gratitude.
If we all strive to build this influence that urges us to leave our response, this could just all have a trickle down effect. You being influential, other seeing that, your community urges to respond. The cycle goes on.
What’s Your Attraction / Drive?
I’ve highlighted how we can all instill this “urge” for community response by being:
- Being transparent with our own content
- Offering the purpose to gain knowledge or thought
- Building your own personal influence
With all of this taken into consideration we must all know what our attraction and drive is for each of our communities.
If we don’t know this then we can’t effectively instill this urge I’ve been talking about. Yes, this will be you trying to really figure out your passion. It will also be you striving to really stand out in your niche, area of interest, and the blogosphere.
I still want you to know that none and I mean none of this can be done if your content or even design for your blog is not of great quality in your own eyes.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Hi,
Good point you raise there. You know, I have also left comments where the blogger did not ask any question or ask for any type of response, and the reason were the ‘urge’ that you mention. So you are right in saying that bloggers should try to ‘Instill the Urge for Community Response’.
Kindest,
Nabeel
I too want to raise some points. this is a good point you have raised
This is something that I have recently learnt to do, I have noticed that I now receive quite a few comments and I like to think it is due to my content but it is probably only down to my blogs being do-follow.
Dean,
I believe that mainly bloggers will leave a comment if your blog is do-follow because it helps them out not because there is an “urge”.
Best,
Derek
Even if some people are coming to your blog just to get a dofollow link I do not thing that this is bad. They will have to read some of your content in order to leave good comment and if the content is good some of them might start to visit your site not only for links. And even if they visit only for links, you still get visits and still get free unique content to your articles (from the comments). And I have notice that the comments help for ranking of your article.
I do not know if having 300 comments and links is good but you can always limit the maximum number of comments.
Interesting points you talk about. I have just recently started thinking more about commenting on my own blog and how I can encourage my readers to get involved.
I think commenting is really important if you want to build a community. I have found that most comments I get are ones from people who want to add their own twist to a subject that I am talking about.
I have been trying recently not to self censor, and I always encourage readers to disagree with me if they want to. Debate is fantastic, it helps everyone to have new ideas and to grow. You just have to be open minded.
Mark,
You are right that commenting does add to the sense of a community but also do the responses that are “unnoticed” or retweets, likes, etc. The unnoticed responses are ones that done through say casual talk on a skype conversation or just via text, phone, or at the local coffee shop. If get these responses we have done our part for the real “urge”.
Best,
Derek
I forget where I read it, it may have been Problogger, but the advice was to not try and make your post too perfect. By that, you should leave a bit of room for discussion. The way you present your opinion can determine how much discussion goes on about it. Be to hard nosed and likely you’ll get little or no comments.
I like Mark’s comment. If you censor those that disagree with you it will kill your blog. Why will anyone choose to post a comment if they know you’ll delete differing view points. Having a blog full of “yes men” comments does nothing for nobody.
Jack,
That is a good point in that we should not try and cover everything… our posts might just be too long. It would be a neat experiment to see how the community would respond if we shortened our posts.
Best,
Derek
Derek,
You make a fine point in stating that if your content or design isn’t up to snuff in your eyes, the community response won’t be strong.
The community responds to you, and if you aren’t clear with your blog they will sense this lack of clarity on a deeper level. Believing 100% in your blog is what speaks to the reader: this is where passion comes in.
Ryan Biddulph
Ryan,
I know I and many others talk about having this passion. But, it is so crucial otherwise you and your community are going to seem truly fake. This will also hinder any blog expansion you go after. I’ll be talking about this a couple times this coming week.
Best,
Derek
Well you have to think about it this way maybe you do get more comments because they are do follow. But most people who write honest comments are not looking to write comments because its do follow. But the main reason they write comments is because you writing about something interesting and they have to comment. But you seriously need to know what your writing about and never forget to keep writing about what you want to write about.
Most readers want the sense of connection in the article that they read and that’s an important element that call them to give response and leave their comment.
Inspiring words with interesting knowledge – that will help it to work.
Nasrul,
A sense of connection is a great point.
Best,
Derek
Nice Derek! We have a couple kids your age and hope they are putting together their unique gifts as you are. You have some great points here, and very well articulated!
One poinenent point you make is one of transparency. I wonder if we were more transparent in our blogging if we would increase our visitors, and of course, our business.
Colleen,
I very much appreciate the kind words you have. I’m positive that your kids will do the same!
Be transparent is very important. You don’t want to be fake. Being fake was easy before social media, but I strongly believe being transparent will help out you and your audience.
Best,
Derek
i also believe in content transparency and try to incorporate it as much as i can in my blog..it is quite obvious that what you are saying, you trust it and practice it.. Or might not take you seriously
You can surely lose some people’s trust faster if your community sees you as being “fake”. This is why its important to have great communication with a majority of your community.
Hi Derek,
Nice Post, Content Transparency is certainly a very important factor to be considered if we want to urge our readers to respond to our post. If our content is not transparent and descriptive enough, then the reader feels that we are trying to deceive them. So to save our self from putting up a bad impression content surely must be transparent.
And yes giving the readers and opportunity to respond is also needed because not all times we are right at what we write.
Also being interactive with the readers also helps a lot.
Shiva,
Thanks and I hope you take any part of what you’ve learned here to use.
Best,
Derek
Hey Derek,
Another awesome post. Doing Blog commenting is really useful for me and I’ve found that is the best way to really build up your community.
Thanks for sharing this awesome post Derek.
~Dev
Hey Dev,
You can expect more!
Thanks for your support.
Best,
Derek
Really great post Derek,
You are absolutely right.
The number of comments or response you get on a post is as a result of its quality.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Onibalusi,
As always I appreciate your kind words. Originality, transparency, and creativity all will help us get this urge I’m talking about.
Best,
Derek
A great post, thanks a bunch,
I find one of the best way to get good comments is to ask people to add suggestions to a list that you’ve already started, this way you get users not only interacting with your site, but with each other as well
Robert,
Remember this posts was not just about getting good comments but also getting a response in terms of outside causal talk, retweets, etc.
Best,
Derek
Building relationships with readers is like building relationships with anyone else. They can’t be one-sided.
Like you say it’s not enough to request comments. It’s not even enough to just reply to comments. My best commenting policy is to be truly reciprocal and take the time to visit my commentators’ blogs and leave them comments as well. This builds a more interactive community of readers for my blog.
I also make sure to cite some of the great posts that my colleagues and commentators post on their own blogs when appropriate. This does a lot to build loyalty and expand my network of online friends.
Joella,
The point you bring up about citing other people’s work help create a big network of shared links and pass your “urge” to share their information to your community to hopefully create one for yourself.
Best,
Derek
Great information and posts here, all the information I have learned will improve my blogs and blogging, thank you!
Good to see another post of yours Derek!
In my case, i have more emails from contact page then comments. They mostly ask for a help, and i am so happy to respond them, because i know i can help.
I guess that’s the urge of my blog
it depends on our niches, i assume.
Kimi,
It surely will range on the type of community you are going for in terms of how they will leave their response. In your case through emails, which I assume will help with casual talk online and offline from the conversations you’ve had with people in these emails.
Wish you the best!
Best,
Derek
I think I should learn from you, beside of Alex, you’re a nice teacher. Being a blogger means to be active.
Reza,
This means a lot to me and Alex. We both hope to hear from you often then
Awesome Post
I’ve ultimately uncovered a typical presentation on this issue. Thank you
Great points and advice
You’re welcome Andy!
Thanks for the nice compliments; it’s a work in progress and great hobby — I basically like to write about sites I have visited and find interesting. Thanks again – tom Smile
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