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Home » The Famous Blog » How to Get More Comments on Your Blog

How to Get More Comments on Your Blog

August 25, 2011 - Last Modified: August 25, 2011 by Ashish Patel

Blog Commenting

Comments are the lifeblood of any truly successful blog. They keep the discussion going well after the blog entry has ended. And they signal to new visitors that other people find the blog interesting and worthwhile.

If you want to ensure that your blog becomes successful, retains visitors, and encourages visitors to stay longer and to become more active, then you should do whatever you can to try to draw more comments.

Below, I will discuss 7 different strategies you can use to get a lot more comments on your blog.

1. Repost or Reference Comments

One great way to draw in readers and to encourage them to comment more frequently is to reward them when they do it.

Example: If someone makes a particularly insightful remark about your post, then it may make sense to comment on it explicitly.

You can do this by quoting part or all of the comment, mentioning the poster by name, and then saying something complimentary or funny about his or her post.

Tip: Remember to check you type the commenter’s name correctly. If you’ve got international blog readers, you’ll easily type their names wrong – and that can only make an impact in the opposite direction.

If you do this in a way that makes people feel involved and recognized for their effort, then they’re more likely to contribute in the future. Others, seeing this, will also contribute.

 2. Hold Contests

Another good way to encourage readers to become commenters is to hold regular contests.

In these contests, the entry fee will simply be making one or more comments. And the prize can be a number of different things, including merchandise from your niche or store; or the opportunity to make a one-time guest blog.

As far as picking winners goes, this is up to you. You could either select them yourself by picking the “best comment” or you could randomly select a comment using random.org.

The first method is entirely subjective; however, the second method may lead you to select someone who only put in a nominal effort, perhaps by writing “good post,” which could anger other participants.

Tip: If you make a random selection , in order to optimally take advantage of this opportunity, you may also want to screencast the selection process and post it on your blog at a predetermined date and time.

Feel free to make real-time voice-over while you’re screencasting to add excitement to the video.

This could draw a lot of interest from participants and give your blog a healthy traffic spike.

3. Be Controversial

Another good way to encourage readers to comment is to occasionally post something highly controversial, but not ethically objectionable.

Example: You might cite a famous Internet marketer who has claimed that creating an email list is a waste of time; and that you should instead always send traffic directly to your salespage.

When it comes down to it, you don’t even have to take a side. You can simply introduce the controversy and then let commenters jump in and create the debate.

This can be an excellent way to draw readers in and prompt them to get involved.

With all of this said, I cannot stress enough that you should not post controversial topics that could be construed as morally or ethically objectionable material. This is more likely to turn off readers, rather than get them involved.

4. Create a Poll

Polls have many virtues. One virtue is that they allow you to capture information about your visitors that you might otherwise not be able to get. Another virtue is that they prompt involvement on the part of those who feel that their preferences were not well-represented in the poll.

I want you to use polls for the second (and lesser-known) virtue. That is — create a poll that is incomplete — and then allow commenters to chime in by arguing that you should include additional categories and explaining why that is the case.

Tip: Alternatively, you’ll offer a complete list of choices but rather explicitly ask them to comment why they chose it. People will start a discussion on why X is better than Y or vice-versa.

This should stimulate some interesting comments, which could lead to a discussion between blog readers.

5. Give Readers Less Time to Comment

As with many things in life, it’s all too easy to put off blog commenting and tell ourselves that we will do it tomorrow instead. And, not surprisingly, this is something that many would-be commenters do.

They decide to put comments off until later, but when they go to do them at another time, they find a new blog post and lose interest in placing the original comment.

One way to get around this is to put a cap on the amount of replies you allow or the amount of time people have to post replies.

When they see this cap and realize the implications, they will be prompted to post now, rather than later. While it may seem counterproductive at first, it can work quite well in practice to bring in additional comments.

6. Show the Carrot

Instead of threatening to prevent people from commenting, you may want to consider giving them a positive incentive to comment.

For instance, you could put some lower bound on the number of comments you must receive before you will create another post.

With this said, it is important that you follow the response to this policy over time. Make sure that readers aren’t simply posting “good work” or “nice post,” but instead are actively participating. Otherwise, this system will not work and you may need to switch to something else.

Note: I can’t stress enough the importance of the “carrot” principle in place for this strategy:

You need to show people what’s next.

Tease them about the next blog post and make it clear that you’ll post this new exclusive post right after you reach a certain amount of commments.

 7. Make a Typo

Similar to tip #4, which involved creating a poll that purposely excluded certain categories of response, you may want to consider drawing comments by intentionally making a mistake.

You can do this by occasionally making a typo, which will incite those who cannot accept typos to comment.

Of course, with this strategy, it is critical that you do NOT go over-board. Frequently making typos on your blog will make you look unprofessional and will hurt your chances of long run success.

Conclusion

If you want to have a successful blog, then you need to convert readers to commenters.

Fortunately, if you want to do this, all you have to do is use one or more of the seven strategies I’ve provided above.

In a matter of weeks, you should see significant improvements in your reader involvement, commenting, retention.

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Filed Under: Blog Comments

About Ashish Patel

Follow @AshishPatel_Com

Ashish Patel is a well known Affiliate Marketer and Blogger. You can join his 7 days E-course to learn basics of affiliate marketing, blogging and product creation.

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{ 31 Responses }

  1. Garen says:
    Nothing is more odd then a blog that has no responses to their comments. I like, running a contest on quality commenting or posting that is a great way to increase engagement. You could make the best comment that you like as the winner. These are some good tips and I am always trying to keep people commenting on my blogs :)
  2. zavera says:
    Great tips for new bloggers, i will try these to get more comments to my websites as well. Thanks for share!
  3. Sherry says:
    Interesting article, If you publish quality and informative post then more people going to like it and hence you may get more cool comments which really encourage you a lot. Interaction is such an important element, so is retaining a good sense of humility and an unbiased opinion.
  4. rahul says:
    I Do Got many spams which is very annoying to me!
  5. Aritra Roy says:
    I use commentluv in my blog, and in the very first day i got huge comments, some of them were definitely spam, but the rest were legitimate...
  6. Ana says:
    Sometimes I wish I had less comments... LOL Nice ComLuv Premium, Hesham; don't you love all the features? Ana
  7. Karen says:
    Whats surprises me the most is the sheer amount of blogs that have a link to add a comment but none of the comments that others may have made are in view. I've seen the comment count but cant find the comments... I start thinking maybe I'm not looking hard enough maybe LOL. WHY do they want me to search for the comments? And hey NO I won't be commenting on your blog if you treat commenters like that! The CommentLuv is a great tool and the latest premium is a wow. It's a great of rewarding genuine commenters. Couple it with dofollow and it;s a winner for everyone :-) I don't get the bit about "closing comments down". Sometimes people may leave comments on old posts and add a little more SEO content. Google does spider fresh content in comments and that can bring an older post back to life or to your attention to update it a little.
  8. Jason says:
    Reading through these comments, I think mentioning Point 7 provided an illustration of Point 3.
  9. Jason says:
    " 7. Make a Typo" Aha! I see there's a method to your madness... LOL :-)
    • Jason says:
      Oops, I thought this was one of Hesham's posts. Sorry....
  10. Siddharth Goyal says:
    I like the idea of "making a typo". That's shady but original. :D
  11. Peter says:
    Hey Ashish, thanks for these great tips most of them I used already but the second tip(Hold Contests) I didn't know but I use it now and it helped me. Only the fifth tip I disagree you shouldn't make them post comments fast because if they like your post they will comment.
  12. Atulperx says:
    I will say that before being controversial, you must prepare yourself and get ready to accept all criticism posted on that post. Almost 4 years back I exposed one cheater on webmaster forum and believe me that my blog was flooded too hard comments. Few webmasters appreciated but many bad boys created over there and I have to accept that I was not expecting something like that.
    • Hesham says:
      Off topic: Would you please use your name instead of your domain name where it says: YOUR NAME? I really don't want to delete your comments, so consider it a good criticism :)
  13. Marya says:
    I actually read through all the comments, and that doesn't happen that often. I had to see what sort of comments people are leaving, considering everything you have said. Good job.
  14. Sonny says:
    I think eliciting more comments on a blog can be as simple as installing the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins, and linking to commentators' (or is it "commenters'"?) sites with dofollow tags. You know, something to make it worth their while.
    • Marya says:
      I agree. :). Also getting responses from the author is pretty helpful as well.
  15. Shiva says:
    Make a typo, Hmm, that really sounds quite unique. Never heard that method of getting more comments before. But I am sure that method will surely bring in more comments since there are a lot of critics out there who just want a chance to go after the post author. I have tried almost all the other tips except the polls one, will have to try that now.
  16. Cindi Li says:
    i really don't care if anyone comments or not on my blog i don't encourage it but u can if u want to
  17. Ashish Patel says:
    Thanks for your comments guys :) Typos - It is somewhat controversial, I'll use this method only if i have an established blog and loyal readers. :) Ashish Patel
    • Hesham says:
      mmmm... I wonder if someone read this comment! By the way, one good idea to get more comments is to actually reply to comments and interact with people! Have you done so in your post?
  18. A. Tatum Jr says:
    Make a "typo" that's the first time I've heard that one. That would make my wife comment for sure lol.
  19. Jamie Northrup says:
    Great tips, I'm about to hold a few contests and will definitely include commenting as a way to enter, as for the typo idea, I don't need to implement that one, it happens naturally far to often lol.
  20. Ileane says:
    Good suggestions here. The only one I won't use is #3. I've seen those controversial posts on other blogs and for me they are an instant turn off. Hey, I just realized something - you almost had me :)
  21. Christian Hollingsworth says:
    Make a typo. Love it! That's one quick way to get eaten alive. Done it before, and yes, lots of comments and emails too. Let's see here, I think what helped me attract the most amount of comments was making sure I had a very simple and easy commenting system to use. No captchas, no fancy logins, no nothing. Just use a simple commenting system - and put your readers through no hoops to do so.
  22. Wong Chendong aka The Bad Blogger says:
    All are great accept the last one about typos, though you said it should not be use too often, but to my surprise, there are some idiots rather then telling you about typos they tell you that your English is terrible... trust me, I had lots of this comments on my blog, so I think typos are not a very good concern for readers. And the one I like is controversial and I really like to write this type of post, though it will upset some people but still is one of the best ways to gain more comments then you ever thought possible. Thanks for sharing some awesome tips for getting more comment.
  23. Ryan Biddulph says:
    Hi Ashish, I like these tips because they are completely different from many of the get more comment type posts I've read. It's creative to close out your comments after a shorter period of time. I write a post a day. If you want to keep up with me, you should comment immediately after reading. This puts a premium on commenting quickly. Of course, adding value the chief goal of commentators. My fave strategy is to leave thoughtful comments and other blogs and many of my fellow bloggers do the same for me. Thanks for sharing your insight! Ryan Biddulph
  24. Hung Hong says:
    For new blog, with little traffic, to get more comment we need more time for sure
  25. James says:
    Getting comments is great but I would rather see a sale than comments. i don't get that many comments on my blog, but as long as it continues building my list and making sales, I am not going to stop.
  26. Brian D. Hawkins says:
    Great tips Ashish, I do most of that. I've never tried a pool though. Posting comments on other blogs seems like a plus to me. Off I'll check your blog out.
  27. Dave Lucas says:
    I agree with you about POLLS. CONTESTS not so much: http://dave-lucas.blogspot.com/2011/08/blog-contests-missing-mark.html Comments are not necessarily the be-all of blogging: I know of several bloggers who kept comments closed for YEARS and never lost popularity or PageRank: they switched 'em back on when methods of killing spam and weeding out idiot comments became available. I've never heard of anyone "putting off" commenting - I HAVE HEARD many complaints from people who have a genuine comment to add value to a blog post, but can't because "comments are closed" NEVER CLOSE COMMENTS! that's just my 2 cents, brother! Blog On!

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