Have you ever felt jealous of blogs that receive huge number of comments?
Did you ever wish to have more comments on your blog posts?
If yes, your wait is over.
Here
is a post that will ensure you to get enough comments on your blog to
satiate your hunger for comments. Follow these steps to get more
comments on your blog and make a community of readers around your blog.
How to Get More Comments on Your Blog?
Blog comments
are a form of token that certifies that readers have read your posts and
the writing resonated with them to an extent that they thought to leave
their feedback on the writing.
Blog
comments are a way through which the readers can share their reaction
of approval or denial in context of the post written. In the same way a
writer can get genuine feedback, and can connect with the readers
through the comments below his post.
When
a new visitor comes to your blog, the first thing he notices is the
number of comments received in the blog. If a visitor finds some 70-80
people’s comment on the blog then he surely will have a positive
attitude towards the blog. This in itself is half battle won.
Blog
comments also help in SEO of your blog. The more comments you will
receive, the more user-generated content will increase on your blog.
This will help you to get higher ranking in search engines.
The
reason behind this is; Google and other search engines will think that
your blog is updated (which actually is the comment), and will index
your website faster for the text that the comment has. This is because
your comments are index-able, crawl-able and can also rank for the data
in them.
Now let’s see what you can do to get more blog comments:
1. Write an awesome piece of content
When you expect
people to comment on your blog, you got to have content that catches
their attention. Your content has to appeal to them, no matter if it
does in a bad way. For every negative comment, you get a chance to let
your reader know your point of view and at times you yourself learn to
view things their way. This will only make your bond stronger and you
will gain a loyal readership to your blog.
2. Ask a question at the end of the post
When you end the
post with a question or an attempt for seeking reaction of the reader,
you are sure to get their words. Most readers tend to share their point
of view on a topic when specially asked for it. This will help you know
their point of view on the topic.
Provoking
the readers to share what they think of a post will surely make them
stay a while more on your blog and comment on the topic.
For example: In my post on getting backlinks naturally,
I used this technique. After writing an awesome post on getting natural
backlinks, I asked the readers, if there were some strategies they used
that I have not mentioned in my post. This was to stimulate them to
feel wanted and share their tips with me. Needless to say that post
turned out to be one of my most commented and shared post on BTT.
Ask your readers to share their views
3. Make a Top X list
List
posts are always a favorite among readers. The reason probably is
because that they give a sense of finite length. When you make a list of top X
(replace X with your favorite number 5, 10, 15 so on) you try to pull
the readers towards your post. But, this strategy can be used to gain
good number of comments too.
Mostly
when you make such a list post, you sometimes tend to exclude products
that according to others deserve to be in the list. So when you conclude
such a post, ask your readers if you missed a product they thought
would make into it. You can also ask if their favorite product or item
is included by you or not. Ask them reasons why the items suggested by
them should be in the list. This way you get a lot of responses which
can be from there on made a conversation.
Below is the live example from this post where I got 100+ comments ;)
List post with huge number of comments
4. Give them the privilege to share their tip
When you are writing a post, weave sections inside the post to let them
know that you are waiting for their tip on the issue. In the conclusion
section, you could also ask them to share their tip on the problem the
post is related to. Most readers like to share their advice. They will
get exposure through it and you will get comments.
Read comments on this post to see what I actually do. You can clone the same strategy.
5. Use strong CTA
Using
CTA or Call to Action, at the end of the post tends to do well. You can
ask the users to subscribe to your blog, share it or buy something. But
in this case, we need comments so ask the readers to leave one.
Read more about Call to actions and how to use them for maximum benefits.
6. Cook a controversy
Controversial
episodes tend to sky rocket the TRP of the daily soaps. If that weren’t
the case millions of people wouldn’t be glued to their TV sets to watch
Big Boss or other realities shows.
Similarly
controversies tend to do well in blogging too. You can quickly grab a
few eyeballs by writing on a controversial topic or by negating a widely
accepted theory. People will simply pour in your blog to get their
voice placed. You will get handsome number of shares too.
But before taking such a step take care not to hurt someone and always
say things that you can back with strong proofs in case you need to
defend yourself. Just speaking randomly about a thing and then not
having enough proofs to back you off is “suicide”.
7. Blog design
You
should not clutter your website with too much ads and any such thing
that will not leave your visitors with no room to breathe. This will
cause them to flee halfway. Comments are a far thing they will cause you
a bounce rate too.
Always remember:
- Leave a lot of white space on your blog
- Use a good font
- Don’t use a sticky widget that crawls till your blog footer unless that’s the only option. This is because the readers will feel like a cage during the scrolling of blog. Moreover same unchanged sticky widget will make them bored.
8. Use different comments system
Sometimes, your audience might be active on a different medium than the
one you might be waiting for them on. So try to evaluate the platform
that enjoys your readers’ maximum attention and use it as your
commenting system.
For example,
if your site is related to viral stories, humor or fun stories or
pictures of the same genre, chances are your readers are active on
Facebook than any other social platform. So use Facebook as the comment
system. Still, you can have the standard blog comment facility for users
who have a website or prefer not to share their Facebook ID with you.
This will work in both ways.
Similarly you can use disqus comment system that has an assimilation of almost of the three popular social networks plus the standard commenting system too.
CERTAIN TIPS TO GET MORE COMMENTS
- Be polite in your tone - Being polite eases the visitor to settle down for some more time on your blog
- Interact with the replies - When a visitor comments he expects you to share your reaction or reply too. So firstly thank him for his comment. Politely state if you agreed to what he said or not. If you have a different point of view, explain it to him calmly without getting arrogant.
- Don’t fall to your audience’s wish - yes; you should not succumb to your audience’s arrogance. After all, it’s your blog and you have an upper hand. Moreover nobody will eventually love to read to a blog that does not have its own voice or stand. So if someone is bullying you or strongly going against the rules of your blog, moderate that comment to trash.
- Modify your “number of comments section” - Most blogs have the number of comments displayed near the title of the post and at the end of it. Imagine what could be a bigger turn off when your reader comes to see your post was published a week ago and the text near the title displays a blunt “No comments so far”. So it would be wise of you to change the text displayed there to something more inviting like “Leave your comment”, or “click here to comment”.
- Be giving - Nobody likes to visit your house if you don’t reciprocate their visit. Same is with blogging too. In order to get bloggers comment on yours you have to also visit their blogs and comment there. Commenting reliable and relevant opinion will not only strengthen your bond but also will make a community of your fellow bloggers. [More on community building later!]
USE OF PLUGINS:
If you are a WordPress user, there are plenty of plugins that will help you get a handful of comments.
- Reply Me - Nobody visits a page for the second time to just see if you have replied to their comment unless it is that important to them. So use reply me plugin that enables the commenter to choose to get notified by email, when the blogger replies to them. This will help you get him/her back to commenting to them by sending them an email after you have responded them.
- CommentLuv - Commentluv plugin is by far the best way to get more comment on your blog. What Commentluv does is that it gives a link back to the commenter’s site after the comment. This link can be from the most recent 10 posts of him. This will make your blog a hot cake because everyone would like to get more exposure from leaving links to recent articles of them. You got comments and they get exposure and link back. You can also choose to make the links dofollow or nofollow as you wish. I would say make them nofollow.
- GASP + Akismet = No SPAM. The combination of these two guardians will save the blog of yours from spam comments.
Building a community around your blog
If
you want to build a community around your blog which is always
fruitful, spend some time daily in building relationship with other
bloggers. Reach up to them on social media sites, read what they write
and share, leave meaningful comments on their blog posts, share their
posts with your followers, in return they would be more likely to do the
same for you.
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