Increasing comment volumes on your blog

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I truly don’t know why people are so much behind comment volumes of their blogs, I really don’t care about it, but there are many bloggers who get frustrated when they write an awesome post and no one responses to it, but comments do help in attracting advertisers, determining your blogs value and at times just to make sure there is someone reading your posts. As you all can see even my blogs comment volumes are very low, but I haven’t concentrated on getting more comments as I had more things to do, so I have no experience in this and this guide contains my research.

As usual traffic and content comes first, you’ll have to be optimizing your blog for more traffic and creating content, increasing comments comes second. Usually only blogging tips, tech and webmaster related blogs have a high comment  volume, this is because most people comment only because they want a back link or a bit of traffic to their blogs, so if your in other niches such as business, politics, health and nature you’ll have to be ready to struggle.

Ask questions, opinions and feedback

Many bloggers ask questions and user opinions on their posts or the post subject, this really works as this encourages your readers to speak out there views. I usually do it by ending my post with ” If you know any more ideas please let me know below” or it can be said in a section in your post telling “on to our readers”. Both these methods work fine, its up to you to understand your readers and optimize according to that.

Participate actively

You can increase user comments by answering their questions and replying to their suggestions. Giving importance and attention to your readers encourages them to become loyal readers and commenter’s of your blog. Try to be as resourceful as possible, try adding some humor and at the end say thanks for commenting.

SEO benefits and exposure

As I mentioned above most people comment only for the SEO benefits and a bit of traffic, so you’ll have to make sure your commenter’s get enough traffic or exposure for commenting. I usually comment on big blogs such as Problogger, Dailyblogtips and Shoemoney only for the high traffic they send me. You can automate this by using some plugins  such as CommentLuv, which visits the commenter’s blog and retrieves his/her latest post, tweet or Digg. You can make a section on your blog for top commenter’s, which should be displayed on all the pages, this way most of your users will be sure of the benefits they get from commenting on your blog.

Reward your commenter’s

Giving cash prizes once in a year as a reward for commenting is of no use, as once your prizes are over one will be willing to comment as their is no motivation, so instead of cash prizes give away free links and ad spaces every month, this way your commenter’s will remain loyal forever. I have mentioned above to use the ‘Top commenter’s” or “Featured commenter’s” section which would list the people who have commented the most with a link to their blogs. Be sure to keep refreshing the top commenter section every month. If you find a commenter with an insightful view or an awesome question, you can reward him by featuring him in your next,and be sure to give a link to his blog, this way more people will be encouraged to join the conversation on your blog and will try their best to be the next featured commenter.

Be controversial

Many times when I go against rules and criticize some company or individual, I usually witness that my comment volumes have a huge rise, and moreover many people start actively discussing on your topic and start debating with you and the other visitors. At this time don’t forget to get involved in the discussion. Many people may disagree and even criticize you, but don’t care about it, you can generate huge amounts of traffic socially by writing controversial posts.

Make it easy for commenting

Most users would like commenting to be fast and easy to comment on your post. I leave my comment on any good post I come across, but many times I don’t not because of the post, but because its consuming a lot of time to comment on that blog. Its best that you use comment systems such as Disqus, IntenseDebate and JSkit, as all of these are fast and provide a lot more options. In my old blog, as soon as I changed my comment system to IntenseDebate I saw a steady increase in comments.

Don’t forget to say thanks

When a user comments on your blog don’t forget to tell thanks, either directly by replying or you can use a plugin called Comment Relish, which sends a thank you email to your commenter. Another thing most people do is to redirect their commenter’s to a thank you page, you can use the comment redirect plugin for this. Which ever method you use your main aim here is to get your readers to be loyal commenter’s and encourage them to take part in discussions actively.

Engage your readers

Make sure your users get a track of the discussion taking place on your blog, I usually use the Subscribe to Comments plugin which puts a small check box, which permits users to get mails on the future discussions. The idea is to engage your readers as much as possible in debating and discussing on the topic.

On to our readers

Above I’ve listed some methods which work perfectly fine in increasing your comment volumes, but I’m sure you have plenty more in your mind, please feel free to share a few in the comments below. To keep up with more posts get free updates in your inbox by subscribing to our feed and follow me on Twitter.