Back in November 2008, I wrote a post on how to increase the number of reader comments on your blog. The blog post touched on the subject of making your blog readers loyal commentators.
Having loyal readership is a very important part of having a successful blog. Having large RSS readership, having lots of loyal readers and commentators, is important as your readers are the lifeline of your blog and will help your blog grow by spreading the word about it to their friends.
In this article I will analyze some of the latest trends in making your blog visitors loyal readers, regular commentators and part of your blog community.
Promote a reader comment into a blog post
- Chris Brogan recently introduced the “Post from the comments” category, where he promotes interesting comments to his posts and publishes them as an entirely new blog post. This encourages visitors to write insightful comments in hope of hitting the front page and getting great exposure.
See how I did this on my blog: Reader comment on guest blogging and on implementing blogging tips.
Use blog comments as inspiration for articles
- You can choose to answer a visitor comment in a new blog post. Read all your blog comments, respond to the questions and consider answering some good questions in a brand-new blog post. Your blog comments can be a great source of inspiration for your blogging and in this way you can encourage visitors to ask questions in comments to your articles.
See how I did this on my blog: How to make your blog stand out
A personal “thank you for commenting”
- Send unique and personal emails to your commentators. I recently commented on a blog post at Cash Money Life and a day later I received a “thank you” email from Patrick, the blogger, with a response to my comment. And this was not a plugin that sends a generic email to all commentators, this was a personal response. I complimented Patrick and here are his thoughts on personal e-mails:
Thanks, Marko. I try to respond to all comments that require a response. It is sometimes a daunting task though because I write a lot of informative type articles which receive a lot of questions! Still, the nature of my blog is to try and help people, so it is important for me to give responses, even if people only visit that one time. And sometimes it brings people back, which is even better!
Social media users comment more
- Social media users seem to write more comments than an average user. My articles that go popular on StumbleUpon also seem to get more comments. And StumbleUpon users stand for a large number of them. So focusing on building relationship in social media sites is not only good for your traffic, it also increases the number of comments.
Use Twitter for research / inspiration
- Twitter is not only great for building traffic to your blog, it can also be very useful when researching the topic of your upcoming post. Ask a question in Twitter, collect the answers, publish them in a blog post and comment and analyze results / trends. Then thank the people who responded to your question and tell them about your article.
See how I did this on my blog: To give out the best post or not
Just be approachable and friendly
- Be approachable and friendly. Answer emails you get, respond to tweets you get… thank people for retweeting your message, for submitting your article to StumbleUpon and other social media. Basically build a relationship with your readers.
Incorporating these tips into your daily blogging can bring you much closer to your visitors and encourage them to stick with your blog, subscribe to it, become regular readers, commentators and a part of your blog community.
Image by KevinDooley
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Marko, this was a good post for me. Easy to read, and simple steps that any blogger can follow. By the way, I like the way you highlight your popular posts in the sidebar – very simple and attractive layout!
Thanks for the comments!
@Rob Oakes – It is good to know your target audience, what they want to read about, how they want to read it… that is basically what research and marketing is all about. You learn about your audience to be able to attract them to your blog by creating what they are looking for.
@Ricky Buchanan – I would not recommend “encouraging” comments by promising gifts in a contest. That is not the right motivation for your visitors to comment. You may end up with lots of forced one-line comments or something similar. Use the contest to spread the word about your site, for example to enter readers must tweet the message about your site to their followers.
I like the idea of using twitter as a research tool. Something I do often. Reader comments are definitely the lifeblood of any blog. Without the comments blogs wouldn’t be blog. I especially like the idea of incorporating reader comments into blog post. I’m doing something similar with my upcoming SEO newsletter called “ask Gerald” As always Marko thanks for the great post!
I’ve been thinking of hosting a blog contest to give away some software licenses with the entry “contest” being to comment on any post that’s NOT the contest post. I’m hoping that getting the comments flowing might help build up momentum, but I’m not sure – has anybody else tried something like this and has it helped for longer than the contest duration?
Looks like I will need to work on my Thank You mail. I always try to respond to comments and emails and this is having a good effect.
Thanks for a clear well written post. As a on and off blogger for sometime I recently made the decision to reduce the number of Blogs that I had as I wasn’t giving them the quality time they needed (plus they weren’t getting any traffic !!).
I haven’t used StumbleUpon before but will look into using it.
I like the idea about leaving good comments on other people’s blogs. I’ve never thought about promoting someone’s comment into a blog post. I believe that is very clever, and that attracts more bloggers to post intellectual comments.
I also like personal comments a lot more than the “Thanks for posting a comment!” auto spams. That makes me remember the person better.
I agree that Twitter builds great traffic, but it is hard to ask questions for someone who just started using Twitter because they don’t have many followers. So far, I have 51 followers, and none of them ever respond to my questions.
Adding this post to my favorites so I can refer back to it later on. Thanks for the post.
@blogaboutnothin – Yeah to be able to get some feedback from Twitter you need to have a good number of followers. Work on that first and you will see benefits of your work in the future.
@Tamal Anwar – Nice work! It is important always to look at your blog and your visitors and try to improve the user experience daily. Small changes can make a big difference…
I made my blog comments dofollow and added the top commentators plugin. I’m also giving a free ad spot to my top commentator of the month. For all of this I increase my comments up to 300% in February, comparing to January.
Marko, Thanks for tips. I dumped my Thank Me Later auto mailer plugin and started responding personally. results are amazing. i am having great coversations with many readers and they are turning into loyal visitors.
@Mr. I – Great to hear that, congrats! Thanks for sharing!
@ Marko You have inspired me a lot. When I saw that you achieved PR 4 in just 2 months, I said to myself, “If he can, why Can’t I” (in a friendly competitive manner)! and started putting more time in promotion.
As a result, I got a guest post at Daily Blog Tips. I am just waiting to see what are its effects.
My latest post is a guest post by a reader. I noticed this reader left a particularly insightful comment and this made me so happy I sent him a personal email. Basically I thanked him for his contribution in enlarging the points I raised on the post. And then I asked him to flesh out some parts so it would read nicely as a guest post. The very next day he emailed the same comments with additional paragraphs as requested. He’s happy he’s able to build upon where I left off. Thus, I have my first guest post. Well, I’m pleased I have gained a reader who’s enthusiastic in keeping the conversation going in my blog.
So in the next days, I’m looking into your other suggestions in co-opting readers into active participants in my blog. You’ve been of great help to me. Thanks.
@jan_geronimo – Nice success story! Building loyal readers one by one, day by day is what it is all about in the long run. Thanks for sharing!
Nice post!
Good tips I’m going to try out for my studio 119 blog. Thanks again for some very useful tips!