27 Ways to Get your Blog Readers to Comment
Most bloggers want their readers to comment (hint, hint). 😉
There are several ways to encourage people to do so…. (although lately I feel like I'm not the best one to give advice on this topic as my poor blog tends to get neglected while I'm working on my bigger money-making projects).
However, here you go!
How to Get your Blog Readers to Comment
1. Enable the DoFollow plugin so that your commenters' links are followed by the search engines.
2. Enable Comment Luv plug in so that your blog commenters get an extra link from their most recent blog post.
3. Email your blog commenters with a “thank you” after they post. There are automated tools to do this, but it's much better to do it personally if at all possible or have your Virtual Assistant do it for you.
4. Respond to the comment on your blog, which is really just common courtesy.
5. Visit their blogs and comment back. Again, this is time-consuming and can't always be done, but is nice to do while you're having a break with a glass of wine in the evenings. Take a few minutes away from IM, Twitter, and chatting on forums (yeah, I love them, too!) and go visit your readers' blogs.
6. Here's an idea that I hadn't seen before — list all of your blog commenters in a “thank you” post. While time consuming, it is a very thoughtful and appreciated gesture.
7. Hold blog contests and giveaways that involve commenting to win.
8. Have a contest to reward the person who comments most! (Hmm… any ideas for prizes that you'd like to see? I can do this easily! Let me know.)
9. Promote and market your blog so that it gets a lot of traffic. People want to comment on highly-trafficked blogs.
10. Ask your readers to comment. Sometimes people just want to be asked.
11. Ask them for suggestions. Ask for ideas. Ask for Advice. Ask questions — like in this post, I'm asking for YOUR ideas, as well.
12. Send a note about your blog post to your newsletter or ezine, letting them know you'd love to hear their thoughts.
13. Post something controversial. That'll get people talking – for better or worse.
14. Don't allow crappy/yucky spammy comments to remain on your blog. It makes your blog look neglected. Be sure to go in and delete your spam. If you're using WordPress the Akismet plugin will help automate this process. There are tons of other plugins that will help keep spam off your blog as well, but spammers aren't dumb and will find ways around them so be sure you delete the ones that do make it through.
15. Twitter about your best blog posts. That'll attract people who are already talkative to come by and chat. Have your Virtual Assistants Twitter about it, too.
16. Automate the Twitter process. Don't have time to twitter your own posts? Check out this handy dandy tool that twitters your posts for you. Just a note on this tool – it doesn't tweet pre-scheduled posts in WP. Or if it does I haven't figured out the trick to make it work. If you know how leave me a comment! 😉
17. StumbleUpon your blog posts that are informative in nature.
18. Kirtsy blog posts of interest to your readers.
19. There are a ton of ways you can get the word out about a post on your blog similar in fashion to Kirtsy and StumbleUpon. You can add a widget to your blog that lists popular social bookmarking sites right at the end of your post. This makes it easy for visitors to submit your posts to the social networking sites of their choice and bring more people to it, allowing for more opportunities for comments.
20. Get personal. My personal blog posts are usually commented upon more than my others.
21. Be silly or at least “real”. If you notice, in the last post, I mentioned my husband's reaction to beans… Too much information? Probably. But, it's better than being B-O-R-I-N-G!
22. Make it easy to comment. If I try to comment on a blog and have to run through Captchas and logins in order to comment, I'll likely leave. My vision is quite good, but I struggle with those darned Captchas — and they are not friendly at all to those with impaired vision. So, unless you don't want people with impaired vision commenting on your blog… find a better solution.
23. Make sure your commenting works. A few minutes ago, I tried to comment on a blog and received an error. It was a friend, so I'll tell her, but if it wasn't… she might not know for weeks and think her readers weren't interested or reading her material.
24. If you have a Blogger blog, be kind to those who do not have blogger/Google accounts and enable the alternative commenting.
25. Change the default text in your blog template from saying “Comments” to “Please leave a comment” or “Talk to me” or something – to attract commenters.
26. Think twice before setting up your blog to moderate comments. It's definitely a hindrance to those who want to comment on multiple discussions. I've rarely seen active comments on blogs that moderate their comments.
27. Make sure your comment link isn't hiding when people are reading your main page or when they are on a “category” page. Sometimes there's so much “stuff” around the comment link that it's hard to even find.
What do you do to encourage your blog readers to comment? I would love to hear your ideas.
Thanks for reading!
Nicole
PS. Of course, blog commenting etiquitte should always be followed when posting comments. 🙂
Peggy Baron
December 1, 2008 at 3:10 pmHi Nicole,
I’ve always liked your blog for real information. Thanks for yet another good post. I especially like #5! 🙂
Peggy
Peggy Baron’s last blog post..Blog Talk Radio
Chris Bultman
December 1, 2008 at 3:19 pmGood thoughts and ideas. I love blog posts that don’t include a lot of fluff.. this gets right down to the point. I agree, #5 is a very good post because it helps build a strong network!
Chris
Arika
December 1, 2008 at 5:09 pmWell, looks like this is getting you comments now isn’t it? 😉
Commenting on others blogs make a big difference I’ve found.
Arika’s last blog post..Mom Generations Giveaways
SecretAgentMommy
December 1, 2008 at 4:42 pmI saw this on Twitter and had to click over. Some excellent suggestions that I’ll have to implement. Thanks!
Rhonda
December 1, 2008 at 4:09 pmGreat ideas. I’ll try to implement as many as I can.
Rhonda’s last blog post..Crockpot Chicken & Stuffing
Nicole
December 1, 2008 at 4:12 pmTracy @ http://www.momsinablog.com just told me that she has another Twitter tool that she says works great:
http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress/readme?project=twitter-tools
Thanks, Tracy!
Nicole
December 1, 2008 at 5:19 pmYep, Arika.
#28 – Write really long lists of ideas that help people succeed online. 😉
Mary Lutz
December 1, 2008 at 7:27 pmThese are really great suggestions! I’ve already changed some of the settings on my blogs. I was getting some spam on one of my sites and was wanting to block it, but didn’t think about it stopping nice people from commenting!
Thanks!
Mary Lutz’s last blog post..December Coupons from Coupons.com
Lillie Ammann
December 2, 2008 at 4:36 amNicole,
Thanks for all these great tips and thanks for including my thank-you to commenters list. It’s not an original idea, but I have found it to be very effective.
Do Follow and Comment Luv attract comments as well.
Commenting on other blogs is also effective. I found your blog because you commented on mine.
On moderation, you have a valid point. But with a Do-Follow blog, I find the need to moderate the first comment. Askimet is great and catches lots of spam (almost 5,000 since I moved my blog a couple of months ago), but some spam does slip through.
If I moderate the first comment, I don’t let the spammers get a foothold. Subsequent comments aren’t moderated, and I try to moderate comments promptly.
I recently added a brief note above the comment box to explain about first-comment moderation. Though I’ve always had it posted it on my policy page, I was get people leaving duplicate comments because they thought the first one got lost.
Lillie Ammann’s last blog post..By: I’m Lucky
Cassie
December 2, 2008 at 10:10 amGreat list! It’s reminded me to do a bunch of things I’ve been meaning to do for months. Stumbling 🙂
Cassie’s last blog post..December calendars for your computer desktop
Courtney
December 3, 2008 at 7:12 amGreat list. I will be implementing some of what you suggested. Thanks.
Maggie
December 3, 2008 at 6:05 pmWhat a fantastic post. I favorited this page and I can’t wait to work my way down the list.
Thanks
Maggie’s last blog post..The Bigger Person
Patty
December 3, 2008 at 5:51 pmI had favorited this in my tweets to read and am finally catching up. Thanks for the tips…I try to do many of these, not enough stumbles though…I don’t have a WP blog but did find out you can add CommentLuv to blogger, which reminds me I need to get that done!
Patty’s last blog post..Let’s Get Ready for Kindergarten and First Grade-School Standards and Expectations
Erwin Tan
December 6, 2008 at 5:49 amA nice list of tips.. Thanks!
Erwin Tan’s last blog post..Unleashing The Niche Genius In You
Eleisia
December 19, 2008 at 5:32 pmNicole,
Thanks for all the helpful ideas to encourage blog readers to comment. I’ve been blogging for quite a while but I don’t know enough about blog format to follow through with some of your suggestions. I have a free blogger blog and a free wordpress blog and am part of a group blog. I am trying to figure out how to email someone who commented on one of my blog posts. The link goes to their blog and not to email.
Eleisia’s last blog post..Christmas Tree-Shaped Appetizer
Lexi
December 26, 2008 at 1:06 pmThanks for the tips. I leArned a lot of new things. Btw if you use friendfeed, your scheduled posts will be tweeted and posted in facebook too. Hope that helps!
Paul Cooley
April 29, 2009 at 9:19 amGreat list Nicole! Thank you 🙂
If you don’t mind me asking, why kind of give a ways or contests have you done in the past? Have you notices some work better than others?
Thanks! 🙂
Paul Cooley’s last blog post..Collecting Testimonials with Twitter
William
April 30, 2009 at 9:24 amHowdy Nichole,
What a great post. I believe that I will be following some of these great idea’s starting today.
Nicole
May 6, 2009 at 11:26 amPaul,
Yes, requiring very little work to enter seems to work best. 🙂
I’ve tried having people submit pictures, stories, and all kinds of things. But, the less work for them, the better.
Also, keep the prizes relevant, as I’m sure you would.
Hope that helps!
Nicole
Jenny
May 9, 2009 at 8:24 amive done all these things and people still dont comment.
Nicole
May 10, 2009 at 8:33 amHey Jenny,
Do you have a loyal readership? Meaning – do you have regular traffic coming in?
If not, I’d recommend working on your marketing/traffic growth. More eyeballs on your blog will also help increase your commenting.
If so, then it could be anything. Ask a few friends if they’d be interested in commenting on your blog and you’ll comment on theirs just to get the commenting started. 🙂
Hope that helps.
Nicole
Joi
December 11, 2009 at 10:14 pmGreat stuff!
Something that also helps is to have a widget on the side that displays recent comments and links the individual’s name to their website.
It’s hard, but really people have to not get too stressed out about comments or lack of comments. Some niches/blogs simply generate more than others.
I’ve found that with my Self Help blog, for example – people simply prefer to e-mail me! I have no idea why this is, but it’s okay by me. On the other hand, I have a dreamology blog that gets a great number of comments. Go figure!
Chris
February 15, 2010 at 7:08 pmWow this is a lot of useful information on how to get people to comment. Thanks for the list.
Rob Britt
April 28, 2010 at 12:36 pmTimeless information here Nichole! You knwo when you have comments on a post that span a two year period, you gotta be doing something right.
thanks for all these ideas, I’ll certainly be putting them to use.
gracias,
Rob
Rob Britt
April 28, 2010 at 1:34 pmoops, mispelled know.
One question, what plugin did you use to add the twitter completion field in the submit comments area
you know..down
there .
.
…..
…
.
Nicole
April 28, 2010 at 5:02 pmHey Rob!
It’s this one:
http://comluv.com/download/twitterlink-comments/
Thanks for stopping by!
N
Sanam
July 21, 2010 at 7:17 amGreat post nicole. I just love it. Specially tip # 6 is something new for me. Anyways its my first visit to your blog and i think i will love to come back again.
Antonetta Wrape
January 5, 2011 at 8:13 pmThanks for the marvelous posting! I really enjoyed reading it, you can be a great author.I will remember to bookmark your blog and may come back later on. I want to encourage that you continue your great writing, have a nice holiday weekend!