So you created a great and useful article. You are really proud of yourself because you put your heart into your writing and caught the topic in the way you were imagining. And now, after all the editorial work, you feel comfortable with clicking Publish button and to release your article to the world.
First day and then second day pass and you realize that the wonderful article you created has no comments.. People seem to not care about your blog, about your work, about what you have to say. This is a frustrating feeling might get you, you might become discouraged to write and to develop your blog further. There is simply no interaction created and so what is the point of your blogging?
Sad story and another promising blogger quites the Blogosphere. It is shame that this blogger did not read this article so he/she will find out that getting nice amount of comments to every article is not just a matter of quality content but also something else…
Following these 3 methods you will surely increase the amount of comments, gain new inspirations and get in touch with wonderful same-minded people. I promise:)
1. Comment on small and middle-sized blogs
If you want to receive comments you have to move your ass out and start reading and commenting on other blogs from your niche. I would suggest you to go especially for smaller and middle-sized blogs. Why?
- Your comment will not get lost among the huge amount of comments which big bloggers are receiving.
- Your comments will be much more appreciated by other blogs’ authors. If you share a valuable comment (and you will, there is no point to share “thank you” comments) you will most likely receive a valuable comment back.
Commenting on 10 – 20 blogs per day will surely create enough buzz and you will notice a nice and constant increase in your blog traffic and in number of comments as well.
More comments you make, the more experienced commenter you will become, that means soon it will be no problem for you to leave 15 meaningful comments in one hour. And believe me this hour is a great investment in the development of your blog.
2. Reply, reply, reply and REPLY!
So your hard work finally starting to pay off. You are receiving first great comments, which just enriched your articles in the way you were not thinking before, that is what I like the most about comments the diversity of opinions that will make your article deeper more useful and more interesting.
Great comments deserve a great attention. So never forget to write back on such comments. You are not doing it just to show that you appreciate your commenters but also you are trying to create a real discussion here. Why would you want to create such discussion?
Simply because creating discussions and getting new inputs from other people is the point of blogging. You will be able to move forward, to educate yourself, to become a better person and a better blogger as well.
Yes, and also because such conversation will bring you even more comments.
3. Notify your commenters
But no matter how hard you would try to create a conversation, if your commenters do not know that you replied on their comments there is only a small chance they will return back to check whether you replied or no.
That’s why this third point is crucial to your comment success. You are going to need to install two plugins (I assume here you are blogging on WordPress, if no than you should).
Subscribe to Comments Plugin
This handy plugin will give your commenters an option to subscribe to future article’s comments via email. It is a good method how to increase a chance that your commenters will return back.
But a drawback of this plugin is that people often do not realize there is a small box that is needed to be checked to start receiving notifications, or simply they are to busy to check it.
Therefore there is another plugin, which solves this issue and although some people might consider it a little bit pushy I think it is one of the best plugins that every blog should have (I have never received any negative feedback on it).
Comment Reply Notification
This plugin is really great and it has many options so you can modify it according to your needs. You can set it to send an email notification to the comment author every time a reply is made or every time you (as the blog author) reply.
I would suggest you to go with the second option, you do not want to overwhelm your commenters with too many notifications, do you?
This plugin really works because people will receive directly into their inboxes your replies and they will most likely read it. If they consider your reply interesting enough they will come back and write an additional comment and this is how the real discussion starts.
Questions & Answers
- Did I miss any great way to get more quality comments to a new blog?
- Do you use any of these methods? And what are your experiences?