Blogging with no comments is a lonely world. You spend time crafting a beautiful post, push “submit,” and… nothing.
It’s something we all have to go through – a blogger/online business owner trial by fire. Can you push through the emptiness and reach the highly coveted pinnacles of success?
As long as you’re consistently posting high-quality content only you can create, you’ll (eventually) begin to build up a following. Now, this can be an adrenaline rush at first. Seeing that 25 people visited your page (and they aren’t your friends or family) is a fantastic feeling.
But that rush soon fades as you realize they’re not interacting with your posts. They’re not leaving comments. They’re not liking you on Facebook, they’re not sharing your content.
And all that is very important – not just for an ego boost, but for the future of your business.
So in today’s article, we’re going to cover two areas:
1) Why blog comments are important
2) How you can get more of them
Why Blog Comments are Important
I’m going to cut straight to the point: social proof. It’s all about first impressions. Let’s face it – there are very few people who want to be the first fan of anything. No one wants to be the one who likes something when no one else likes it.
Of course, after something blows up, everyone wants to be someone who “knew about it before it was big.”
In the meantime, though, it’s an uphill battle getting someone to check out what you’ve written, or what you’re offering.
If you have hundreds of comments, on the other hand, people will feel naturally inclined to leave more. They’ll want to join in on the discussion.
But comments aren’t only about social proof. No, they also contribute to a little something called unique and fresh content. Now, if you’ve been reading our articles, you know all about how fresh, unique content helps you in the eyes of Google.
So when you’re only getting 25 visitors a day on your site, the idea is to make the most out of those visitors – get as many people commenting as humanly possible.
How do you do that? Well, pay attention to this next section!
How to Get More Blog Comments
There are a few trusty ways you can get the most out of each and every one of your visitors.
Make commenting a piece of cake – Too often, it’s hard to leave comments. You have to log in. You have to sign up for the mailing list. You have to do something before you can leave a comment. Sure, this cuts down on spam, but there are much more efficient ways to deal with comment spam. And, especially in the beginning, when someone comments, it will almost always be a real person.
With options like Facebook comments, Disqus, and even built in Wordpress comments, there’s really no excuse for making comments difficult to post.
Engage your audience – One of the most effective way to get more comments is to, well, ask for them! This can be as simple as saying, “be sure to leave a comment if you liked this post”, to “first ten people to leave a comment are entered into a drawing for $100.”
Play around with it. Give your readers a reason to comment.
Incentivize Comments – Now, this can be a bit harder to pull off, but if you can, you’ll never have a shortage of comments. If you go to the Huffington Post, one thing you’ll quickly see is that all comments look different. There are awards, points, fans, followers, you name it! Every user’s comment is different.
This makes commenting almost into a game – people love to comment when they get rewarded for it. Even if the reward is nothing more than a special color whenever they post.
Post your own Comments – A great way to further the discussion is to get down in the trenches yourself. Especially in the beginning, reply to every single comment. This will show your users that you care about them and value their feedback. Also, people like knowing they’re interacting with a human being.
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