I was reading Emil’s post about not receiving comments and I started to write my comment. Soon enough my comment was so long it warranted it own blog post.
My very good friend Felix is running a blog in Swedish and we have tried for about a year to make the site’s name famous. It has worked, we’re well known and the name, Zmolklife, has almost become a brand. We have an incredible amount of visitors if you see to the fact that it’s a personal blog. What we don’t have is a steady stream of comments although we know our visitors have things to say. Do I need to change something at the site to make it more attractive or what?
There are a number of reasons why. My blog isn’t a very popular blog, and though I get around 500 visits a day, I don’t get that many comments. This is something that doesn’t bother me at all, but it is obvious that other bloggers do want more comments.
Sometimes I get 25+ comments on a post because it is funny or a great story and readers want to tell me their own experience. Sometimes I only get 3 comments on an article that I thought would do better. It all depends what the reader wants to read, and if it targets them.
To encourage more comments you should ask the reader a question. If you leave a question at the end of a blog post asking me what my thoughts are on it, or to share a story of my experience I will more than likely comment. When it is just a straight up and down article, the reader might be very interested and find it helpful but they don’t necessarily want to go comment “hey your article helped me thanks”, they would rather read it, learn and then move on. So by leaving a question at the end or asking for ones experience creates more interactivity, which visitors love.
Another reason (some) visitors comment is because they are greedy, they only comment on the blogs they want to suck up to (i.e. the ones with a high PR, or the ones with 40+ comments already) in the hope they get more referrals to their site. Take Jemjabella.co.uk for example, everyone comments Jems blog post even if it’s a really boring one (not that she has many boring ones, but some don’t really require comment). If you read through some of her more reason posts, she has left questions throughout each post, so someone is going to read one question and think to themselves *no I don’t really know why* but then read the third question in the post and think *hey I know the answer to that, you…* and then they comment. Her posts invoke discussion and encourage people to contribute. That’s one reason I always go back, to view the conversation happening in the comments.
Another reason people may not comment is because they read your blog through a feed reader, and they are too lazy to visit your website itself. You can let visitors comment through a feed reader by using Feedburner, to do this just activate FeedFlare. Under FeedFlare, you’ll see checkboxes and put a check on “Comments Count”. That way, subscribers will see the number of comments below each syndicated post. They can just click that to leave a comment without ever leaving the comfort of their feed reader.
Replying to comments makes a big difference too. I don’t mean going to the commenters’ blog to reply on their blog on a post which is probably unrelated. Reply to them on your blogs post. Most of the time, the visitor will return to see if you replied back. Not a standard reply like “Thanks for commenting” but something that invokes more discussion. For example, let’s say you posted a blog about “What font size is best” and your post discussed what font and size you preferred, and then you asked the visitors what font and size they preferred. The visitor replies with “I love verdana 10px”, why not ask them “why is it that you like verdana and why at 10px. Have you ever tried Arial at 12px”. Then they will probably return, see a response and reply back. That in itself is a higher comment count even though you are the one contributing. Then another visitor comes along and reads your blog, reads the other visitors comment and decides to say “actually I have to disagree with both of you…” and so the discussion continues.
Some things just turn visitors off from commenting at all, let alone even reading the blog post, such as page cuts (the read more link). No one wants to read half of what you are saying and then realise that they have to click further just to read the end of the article. Some may just give up and leave. Most visitors hate clicking, the quicker they can get to and read content, the quicker and easier decision it is on whether they want to comment or not. It just makes sense to not cut blogs down to a “read more” link and leave it all out there as one whole uncut post.
Sometimes you can offer incentives for someone to comment. Giving your visitor a chance to have their website plugged is a great reason for someone to comment. Of course some of these comments will come off as “fake” because they aren’t commenting for any real reason other than to get a quick plug. But not all visitors are like that, and many will appreciate that because they took their time to comment genuinely it is great to give a plug back. They give comments (which you want, right) and you give link backs (which they want), so everyone wins.
And last but definitely not least, make sure your comment form works and that comments actually go through. Don’t hold comments for moderation unless you have a serious spam problem. You can use Akismet for Wordpress which will get rid of spam and the need to moderate comments. Visitors like to see their comment up straight away so they know it went through. If you must hold it for moderation, tell the visitor after they have posted it that it is being held for moderation.
If you haven’t told me my comment is being held for moderation, I don’t know where my comment has disappeared and it has me worried. I would try re-comment and if it doesn’t show or tell me that it is being held, I would leave the site and probably never comment again (though I would keep reading future blog posts).
If your blog receives a high amount of comments, what do you think contributes to getting them (apart from having brilliant posts) and what do you love about receiving comments?
