Most bloggers post their content in hope of receiving a lot of comments. Apart from being a potential source of feedback, comments reflect user interest and are one of the best indicators to gauge a reader’s reaction to a blog post. We all want people to love our work and engage in intense discussions about our brilliant ideas, right?
If you are struggling to get readers interested in a discussion, do not despair and give up blogging altogether. Blogging is an important way to bring in loyal visitors to your website, to build up your search engine ranking, and to generate ad revenue. So, instead of throwing out all of your hard work, try some of the following suggestions below for writing posts that encourage comments.
Regularly Scheduled Programs
One of the crucial elements of the success of a blog is traffic. Unless a blog gets ample traffic, people won’t know that the blog exists and obviously the blog won’t get any comments.
The best way to build traffic is to post on a regular schedule. Regular posting does several things for you:
- Provides consistent content for search engines – search engines like Google look for new content. The more you provide, the better for your rankings. The assumption is that newer content is more relevant.
- Gives readers something to expect – if readers know to expect regular posts, they’re more likely to check in or subscribe to your blog. The more they read, the more likely they are to post comments.
Strong Position
Taking a strong position in a post encourages readers to express their opinion and share it with you. Readers find it much easier to engage bloggers with a clear position than those who just post content that does not elicit any opinion. Interesting and well-written content also garners plenty of attention and comments.
Social Sharing
Even if a reader won’t comment, they may be likely to share your content on Facebook or Twitter, for example. Put social sharing buttons on your blog to make it easy for them to spread the word. Maybe their friends will comment!
Get Comments Started
It can be awkward to be the first to post a comment, so seed the conversation a bit. Friends can help the post conversation get going. Ask your friends about a topic that they might be interested in and write about it. Once you post the content online, ask them to read the post and comment on it. If your friends are also bloggers, exchange all the links to these blog posts, so you also comment on their posts when they comments on yours. Through this give and take, each and every post is guaranteed to get at least one comment.
Make Commenting Easy
If at all possible, avoid using the Facebook commenting feature that requires users to be logged into their Facebook account to comment. This creates a number of privacy concerns for sensitive consumers, and not everyone wants their Facebook friends to know where they’ve been leaving comments.
Make it easy to leave comments. It’s okay to require a Captcha Code to be filled out or some other human checking mechanism. But don’t require them to register with your site or have to use a social media account to post. You’re just making it difficult for them with these features.
And instead of the boring and impersonal ‘Leave a Reply’ text that appears above the comment area, customize it to make it sound more human. A few popular call to action phrases that you can use to request people to respond without sounding too persuasive are “What do you think?” or “Let us know your thoughts!”
The fact that readers leave comments clearly shows that they have something to say and that you said something that resonated with them. Always reply to every comment that you receive so people know that you care about what they think. This is also a nice way of rewarding those who leave a comment. Always be polite, forgiving, and respectful, and you’ll see conversations and comments galore.