This post is written by Niall Harbison
For people who are just starting out in the world of blogging one of the most frustrating things that crop up is the lack of blog comments that you receive. This even happens to more established blogs who suffer from a lot of lurkers (people who read the blog without ever announcing themselves) rather than people leaving comments. If you are lucky enough to get comments they can be the lifeblood of your blog and a great source of additional content and go on to be a whole new element to the blog on their own.
So what can you do to get more comments on your blog? I wanted to share some tips that have been very effective for me during the course of building all the blogs that I am involved with…
Reply to comments
This might seem pretty obvious at the start when you are only getting a couple of comments here and there but you should always take time to try and interact with people who have taken the time to share their thoughts on your post. People will begin to expect your replies and leave more comments in return and a real sense of community will develop on your blog.
Pose lots of questions
Although you may think that your opinion is the only one that counts there will be lots of topics that you cover that you don’t know every last thing about so it is good to ask your readers for feedback in the comments. Another good tip is to always finish a post with a question as that will provoke the natural instinct of the reader to answer your question immediately.
Write controversial content
You don’t need to go totally crazy on this one but do write content that polarizes people and makes them think about what they are reading and stirs the passion inside them to comment. Don’t forget that people don’t always have to agree with you and say “great post”, some of the most commented posts I have had are when people totally disagree with what you say.
Comment on other blogs
You’ll often hear people tell you to comment on blogs in order to grow traffic or increase the amount of subscribers you have but the real value here in my opinion is the amount of comments that you get in return. Rather than just fire hosing comments all over the place stick to a good batch of about 20 blogs and start building relationships with some of your fellow bloggers through the comments. Bloggers are after all the sort of people who like to have their voice heard and write so they are the most likely to comment.
Build a community
You have so many tools available to you these days to help you build your community from Twitter to Facebook and forums and you should be using these to leverage the amount of people coming to visit your blog. The key is saying interesting things on these other platforms so as you build a community and people feel compelled to come to your blog and comment.
