As a result of the past nine days of improving your blog, you’ve probably gotten quite a few comments on your blog from new readers. Maybe even more than usual. And you probably want to keep the momentum going long after the challenge is over. So, what’s the best way to encourage more comments? Respond to the comments you already have. There’s nothing worse than going to a party and the host never shows up. Same thing with your blog. Let your readers know you appreciate their thoughts by interacting with them further in the comments.
Today’s assignment
Take some time today to go through your blog posts (recent as well as older ones) and respond to all of your readers who took the time to leave comments. Yes, all of them. Be substantive though, meaning you have to respond with more than just “thanks for your comment!” (Except for the ones who just said “nice post!” They’ll simply appreciate being thanked for reading your blog.) Your response should be a reaction to what they said – you can agree or disagree with their opinion, answer their question if one was posed or extend the conversation by asking them a follow-up question about their comment. You can also share resources or links if it’s relevant to the discussion. Another thing that WordPress users can do is enable threaded comments in your blog settings so that you can respond directly to each commenter in the thread.
Just remember: if you want your blog to be a place for good conversations, then you have to be a good conversationalist.
Once you respond to all of your comments, blog about your experience and the results or leave a comment below about what you learned. If you blog about today’s assignment, be sure to share the link in the comments section below!
Note: Please tag your posts with “31bnb” to make them easier to share with us.
I am a new blogger and have just recently gotten my first comment. I was thrilled to see it, and it was a delight to respond to her comment. I definitely want to create a “community” with the folks who check out my blog, and I know that engaging in conversation through the comments is a great way to contribute to that.
If you do get sick of responding to her comments, you could always just set up a moderating system like disqus (I think it's blogspot compatible) to nip her comments on the bud before they can even be posted.
I feel you here. I always feel awkward posting questions in my blog posts and then waiting for the crickets to show up. Kind of makes me feel naked and exposed to pose a question and get no comments/responses. When I first started blogging a while ago, interestingly, most of my responses came via email. So I would bring those back into the blog strand. I don't know if it was a comfort level or what, but giving folks the option to email me their comments directly was another way to get commentary that I could continue the discussion with.
To this day I'll post a question and get nothing. Posting comments on other people's blogs and linking back in a relevant way to your post might help as well. As more people respond to comments, that gives a way to get someone else's attention but if you end with “I just wondered the same thing on my blog, would love to know your thoughts” and be sure to link to your blog…both the blog author and other commentors might well make it to your way and actually comment on your blog. You're talking to an audience of folks who do comment (other commentors) and to a blog author.
That usually draws me out of my lurkdome on other blogs.
This is a really interesting one for me. I had a really bitter stalker (ex of my husband's) on my http://www.coloredwhite.blogspot.com blog.
She really threw me for a loop when she posted stuff like this: http://tiny.cc/flttq
And that was a tame one.
She would use different names and just post garbage. And I found myself getting sucked into a really sick and twisted passive aggressive “post just to stoke her fire” thing just because I was all hey…if she's the only one that wants to comment, might as well tell her a thing or two.
Honestly, her craziness was the best motivator for me to blog. How wrong is that (smile)?
Generally, when folks comment, I either head over to their blog and comment on something they said there OR if it needs an answer, I'll wait until I have a few comments that need an answer and answer them all together.
I anticipate with http://www.b3homedesigns.blogspot.com that I'll need to do a lot more comment answering once that really gets off and running. Appreciate the comments left so far. Going to think about a creative way to more regularly recognize comments.
Love comments – someone is actually reading my stuff. I had done this some but the task gave me that chance to go back and consider each comment. I am just getting the blog started so I don't have too many comments but I love that a conversation is being created.
I feel the same way about comments…even after blogging for 3 years…it's still a rush
Sometimes it helps to ask questions in your blog post for people to answer/respond to in the comments. It also helps when you comment on other blogs – they will often return the favor!
Sometimes it helps to ask questions in your blog post for people to answer/respond to in the comments. It also helps when you comment on other blogs – they will often return the favor!
A few weeks ago I read a post on another site and she said the same thing. Responding to commenters makes them feel good…makes them want to come back. Ive been trying to respond, but I keep slacking off – I guess I need to stop!
Since the start of the challenge I sign up for a Disqus profile so I can comment more on blogs. I will look into switching my comments on my blog over to Disqus. Thank you.
Thanks so much everyone. It was truly an awesome experience. Especially since my blog was soo new I was use to 1 or 2 comments per piece and to have that many comments and people still stopping by and reblogging and linking to the piece is just a blessing.
I didn't know that it was blog etiquette to comment on comments as well, especially because my commentors are either readers I've never met or my mom. It was great though! I really liked the idea of continuing the conversation, and it's been cool to have a venue to do that with people I wouldn't otherwise be able to have a dialogue with.
Wow! Congrats on being on Freshly Pressed!
I'm always so excited to get comments, I respond to them all! However, I like your advice of making the response as meaningful as possible. I also asked questions in my latest response in order to faciliate conversation. Thanks for the advice!
Whew! Got all the comments responded to! I felt bad, because some of the comments were from January, when I first started my blog. In a lot of cases, I tried to provide more recent responses to make up for the time lapse. I also put out a status update on Facebook letting folks know I am responding to comments as part of the assignment, so if they receive a response it isn't spam!
Like Daniesha, when I first started out I didn't know you were supposed to respond to every comment, but over time I noticed it on other blogs and I decided to follow suit. But I never went back and responded to the older comments until this assignment. It feels good to get this task done, another battle won against my evil nemesis, PROCRASTINATION!
I like the Disqus comment system plugin (which I'm using on this blog) because it gives you the option to post to Twitter when you've commented back to someone – and it will @ the person if they leave their Twitter handle. Most people will subscribe by email to get updates on that particular comment thread, though, so WordPress will notify them when anyone posts a follow-up comment.
I like the Disqus comment system plugin (which I'm using on this blog) because it gives you the option to post to Twitter when you've commented back to someone – and it will @ the person if they leave their Twitter handle. Most people will subscribe by email to get updates on that particular comment thread, though, so WordPress will notify them when anyone posts a follow-up comment.
I think the couple comments I have gotten so far have been helpful. I didn't realize it was blog etiquette to give personal feedback to your commentators. Now that I know I will be sure to be diligent about responding to comments. Great assignment, besides I'm sure comments will be useful when moments of writers block arise.
What a problem to have:) Congrats!
You have to first receive comments to respond to them. I'm getting page views but folks are rarely commenting, even on my FB page. I opened up the blog for parents to talk about their kids accomplishments last Friday, hoping that would break the ice and i got NOTHING! HELP! http://www.chocolatechiponline.blogspot.com
I definitely reply back to everyone… it's such an honor to get comments! My heart skips a beat when I see that I have any comments, even just one from a friend
I already response to any comment I get on my blog. I do have a question: How do you notify the person that you have response to your comment? I am a self-host wordpress blogger by the way.
Thanks much. Super excited as the blog is only 30 days old and to end up on wordpresses front page was just an awesome awesome thing…still smiling about it.
WOW!!! Congratulations on the spike!!!
I actually am normally all over this…responding to each and every one of my commenters. However yesterdays Freshly Pressed surprise landed me over 2,200 visitors and about 100 comments. I've been trying to reply all of them with more than just a “thanks for reading” but it's quite a bit of work.
I think perhaps I will respond to the more substantial commenters and the one's that jump out at me…which has been quite a few actually. Otherwise I just don't think the quality of my responses will be 100%.
I have read several blogs where the author either doesn't respond at all to commenters or just sprinkles in comments. I don't think I will be that way, but I've also learned that I won't necessarily be respoding to every comment that hits my blog.
Hmm…. this is one I keep up with pretty well already. Tends to lead to better engagement, better information and (sometimes) inspiration for future posts.
I actually was planning on commenting on replies today, so this assignment was right on time. And I blogged about it, so it's up and ready for viewing!
http://www.evolvingelle.wordpress.com
So, this assignment was fairly straightforward and in the interest of catching up quickly, I did this first. I only have three blog posts so far (because apparently I can't churn out more than one blog post in a week – gah!), so I mostly responded to the comments on my non-personal-statement-ish blogpost on healthcare and social media. I responded to all the comments on that post.
The comments on the other posts (at least so far) have been mostly my friends from high school and Akhila
I've chosen not to respond to these because I am in close contact with these people through other channels, and really, I'm not sure what to say to their encouragement besides, thank you, y'all mean a lot to me, and I am always grateful to have friends like you.