Don’t you hate it when you have written a blog post and no one comments on it?
If your blog doesn’t receive many comments it is not because nobody likes your content, it is most probably because you simply don’t have enough traffic. In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the discussion.
On the way to increasing the number of comments to your blog posts, you would need to build blog traffic first. If your blog already gets traffic, here are 10 ways that will help you increase the number of blog comments.
- Encourage interaction by asking your readers questions. If you want people to leave comments, invite them to do so by simply asking for their opinion or suggestion. When you ask people for their opinion, they are more likely to give it to you. A way to do this is to conclude your blog post with a good open-ended question like “What is your experience with this?”
- Participate in the conversation. Be approachable, answer the questions and write your thoughts on your readers contribution. Recognizing your readers will encourage them to keep commenting on your blog posts and will encourage others to join in the conversation.
- Use Wordpress threaded comments option. It enables blog users to reply to an existing blog comment and the discussion will be displayed threaded or nested. It also sends a notification by e-mail when reply is available. The advantage of threaded comments is that it makes it easy to follow and respond to conversations.
- Thank your commenters. When a user comments on your blog, you can send them a personal thank you email. One of the most downloaded WordPress plugins, Comment Relish helps with this. Another way is to redirect them to a thank you page. Comments Redirect plugin helps with this. Recognizing your commenters will help creating a community and a tribe feeling. This way your readers will be encouraged to keep coming back and keep commenting.
- Post thoughtful comments on relevant posts on other blogs. This will make the other blogger notice your blog and visit it. This might result in the other blogger returning the favor and posting a comment on your blog. Also include outbound links to other blogs posts in your articles. Seeing another blogger link to their blog post will surely get the attention of the other blogger. It results in the blogger most likely stopping by to visit your blog and read your blog post, eager to see what the article is about and why you linked to them. Probability of them writing a comment on your blog then will be pretty high. Plugin CommentLuv will encourage other bloggers to leave a comment as their latest blog post will be shown along the comment.
- Does it say “No Comments” underneath your blog article? Does that sound inviting to your ears? It certainly does not, even though it is the text on the standard WordPress installation and most probably on your blog as well. Open your comments.php and edit the “No Comments” to something more inviting and encouraging like “No comments yet, but your thoughts are welcomed”.
- Let your blog users subscribe to comments and the ongoing discussion. Subscribe To Comments plugin allows commenters on your blog to check a box and get e-mail notification of new comments in the discussion. Install this plugin as it helps create a community and a tribe feeling around your blog by encouraging blog commenters to come back and stay engaged in the discussion.
- Give rewards to your top commenters. It is not the most long term solution to encourage comments by giving money prizes as once the prizes are gone, people won’t be motivated to comment any more. What can be done instead is linking to your top commenters in your blog sidebar. Show Top Commentators plugin helps with this. Another way is rewarding good and insightful commenters by featuring them in one of your upcoming posts. This rewards people already contributing to the discussion but also inspires other readers to join the conversation and be the next “featured commenter”.
- Be controversial when writing blog posts. Don’t be afraid to go against the norm and against the conventions. Having a strong, different, unconventional opinion and perspective in your blog posts is a great way to encourage visitors to comment and voice their opinions on your blog.
- It is important to be patient when waiting for that first comment. After the first comment, everything becomes easier. When visitors to your blog see other people making comments they are more likely to believe there is something valuable at your blog and start writing comments themselves.
These simple 10 steps should hopefully increase the number of comments to your blogs post. I hope you enjoyed it and now go enjoy the conversation with your blog visitors!
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Nice write up! Comments is something I struggle with on my site. Granted, it’s new, so I try not to be to hard on myself – it’s more that I crave the dialogue vs. just broadcasting!
I’ve been doing most of your suggestions, but picked up a couple new ones – so thank you!
@faryl, Thanks for your comments! I am glad I could help.
For new blogs, there is nothing to do, other than to keep writing quality content and to keep promoting!
In my experience, “Post thoughtful comments on relevant posts on other blogs. ” is one of the most important pieces of advice, not only for getting comments, but getting traffic.
Now, that is NOT why I’m commenting here!
@Peter Flaschner, hehe good one!
CommentLuv is quite helpful!
Sweet man, this advice really does come in handy, thanks a lot for teaching it. I keep them in my notepad btw
It works!
Great article! As a new blogger I really appreciate the help!
Hello. Thanks for the helpful tips.
wow, this is amazing article, pure gold. thanks for the tips
Hi there, i found your posts to be very useful and come back very often to take an advise as I am developing my first wordpress blog and i am enjoying it. I think initial steps were easy at blogger confident that as a part of long term, wordpress will have an upper edge. I will continue to look into your posts and benefit and I have . This post regarding increasing the comments is again useful and very well written. Thanks… one think I want to ask, if you can help… I wish to make heading of sidebar like yours that is solid background… can you guide me with steps.
@slym – Thanks for the nice words! I use Thesis Theme. To get the headline background look in your sidebar insert this into your custom.css file:
.custom .sidebar h3 { background:#2361A1 }Can a simple code to get an image not go into the ‘Thesis openHook’ Header field after loggin in? If you see what I mean. this is how I did it. Maybe I’m not doing it right but it seemed to get the result.
And also my whole custom.css is uploaded into the custom folder and I don’t use the .custom before any tags because Thesis grabs it all from the custom folder. Is this just another way of doing it?
I have never thought of #6 before. I had to go and check my blog to see what text I have there – its ‘Leave Your Comment’ so that sounds pretty good.
Great post! i’ve never thought of # 6 before, but after reading this, i will now replace the “no comments” into a more inviting text. thank you for sharing
I’ve got rid of all my usless content on my blog. Anyway No.6 was very helpful and I’ve actually replaced it with an image now. thanks for the helpful tips !!!!!!