This title has a double meaning and both understandings are important to both experienced and new bloggers in marketing through comments.
Here is a short list of tips on commenting you need to know to be more effective and increase your viewership:
- You need to initiate the discussion.
Unless you are in the business of only lecturing on your blog, you need to offer up challenges and thought-provoking questions within and at the end of your article. This does not mean asking broad questions like “What do you think?” or “How do you feel about this?” make your questions lead to a point about the article or a leading open-ended question. - You need to be interaction with others.
The philosophy of “If you build it, they will come” in the blogging community only applies the extremely lucky or extremely famous. Outside of that, you need a marketing plan that will work. One of the quickest and cheapest ways of doing so is by reading the blogs that are similar to yours (you most likely already have a list of ten or twenty), comment on a significant amount and always include a link somewhere back to your site. This not only can help you generate buzz about the topics you find important, but it is an EASY way to create a group of blogging friends along the way. - Be honest and fair but gracious.
As I learned in fifth grade, always treat others like you want to be treated. I want to hone my craft of writing for my blog, including what topics are best, how to write effectively, and all of the technical little details. The most I have learned from this is when someone leaves a comment and lets me know that they are engaged in the conversation. It is good to get another stat on the views graph for my website, but it is a thousand times better when someone leaves me a comment. So, do unto others as you would have them do to you. - Comment on people in all forum types.
While commenting on other people’s blogs is the starting point for all of this, you need to be engaged with other bloggers and readers in all types of forums, especially the social networking mediums. If you only focus all of your effort on your blog and neglect the Facebook Page and Twitter accounts that you set up over a year ago, you are doing your site a disservice. Engage with readers, other bloggers, and the community of people on websites, tweets, and Facebook statuses to maximize efficiency. - Don’t wait till you have a good article, start now.
If you want to build a brand, you need to not only invest the effort of a couple hours of keystrokes of great blog articles, you need to put in the time on these forums long before you write that successful article. If you want to have 5,000 views a month by Easter of next year, you should start fully investing in marketing today. It will take time, but doesn’t all great things?
What ideas do you use that you would include in this list to engage with people via comments?
Was this helpful? Check out my other blogging tips: Categories vs. Tags & Avoiding Bait and Switch Titles.
Great thoughts Jeremy, this is something I struggle with, and really should focus on more often. Thanks for the tip!
Welcome man! Good luck on commenting!
AMEN! Great advice. Thank you for the reminder to start the conversation.
Your welcome! Happy commenting!
Excellent tips, thanks for sharing these!
Welcome. Enjoy commenting!
Nice list of tips.
Two more tips to help the comments flow are:
1) take a side (or make one!) — instead of being neutral, being opinionated will encourage others to chime in — if they disagree, resonate, or even just are trigger to think about the issue.
2) don’t be complete — just like this post above, you don’t need to be the most comprehensive encyclopediac post on a given topic. In fact intentionally leaving out key things will get others to contribute their own suggestions like I am doing right here.
Hope those help. Looking forward to other ideas and brainstorming here in the comments.
Kenny
Love it! Thanks for the share.
Great article, Jeremy. I had gotten away from the practice of asking my readers at http://www.gotworship.net to leave their thoughts…and saw comments nearly vanish. They do tend to pick up when you ask for it.
Thanks for sharing that experiences!
Great list. I have managed to get almost 300 comments across 4 blog posts so far this month (along with a couple threads that keep growing from last month). It has a lot to do with the fact that I am consistent in provoking conversation at the end of every blog post. I always have an open ended question.
I also reward my top commenters every month by highlighting them in a “Month In Review” post at the beginning of every new month. This has generated quite a bit of competition, which creates (most importantly) community.
Intentional engagement, generous gratitude, and competition are my keys.
I think rewarding comments is a great practice! Thanks for the share!