Blog Tip 2: Taking care of Comments

I have told you a little tip in my recent blog tip article which emphasizes the importance of turning your ideas into actions, as valuable ideas are nothing when not pursued, now, we’ll move a step onward and take action by taking care of our blog’s comments, how can we do that? How can we build a small community and encourage people, even first time visitors to leave a comment on your blog?

Basics about Comments for a New Blog

Let’s start from the very top, where you have, let’s say, just started your blog and are looking for a couple of comments on the first few articles that you believe are worthy to receive feedback from readers and other bloggers. What would you do now?

1. Comment on other blogs -Surely, with nothing, comes nothing, or what goes around, comes around. It’s time that you explore the huge blogoshpere out there and leave comments on other blogs, blogs of your friends, blogs that are under your niche if your blog is more on a specific topic.
2. Leave relevant comments – In relation to what I said above, you should leave comments that are related to the topic, and not just say that you wish to link exchange, we’ve been doing that mistake a couple of times ago, and I bet you don’t want to be the next one to have done such mistake, it can make you loose your credibility, and if you leave nice comments, boost it. It won’t only encourage the owner of that blog to hop over to your blog, but the reader of that blog as well!

It’s easy to say something like “nice post”, “nice blog”, but that’s surely not what other people are looking for, let me ask you, are YOU looking for something like that? I bet no. Comments are there to leave feedback and eventually expand on your idea in mind contributing to the discussion.

As a starter in the blogoshpere, it’s recommended to leave let’s say ten (10) to twenty (20) comments per day on other blogs. Good feedback is a must, you don’t need to always agree with what the writer says, for as long as you can justify your point of view. The comments will come eventually, when you keep interacting in the blogoshpere like that, and let’s say that the visitors from other blogs are coming now. Are you sure that you have prepared your own blog for their comments?

How to increase interaction through optimizing your own blog

• Make it simple and quick – The usual data to be collected by leaving a comment that a user needs to input is their email address their name, and a URL if they own any website. You need nothing more. And oh, of course, their comments. Make it easy, a captcha is nice as long as it’s quick and readable for your readers, but don’t include too many steps for that. As you might know, bloggers ain’t be good readers, nor are majority of them patient enough to go through multiple steps just to leave a comment on your blog.
• Give token to your commentors – But dont do it always, else, you’ll spoil them and end up with no one leaving a comment anymore after your comment contest has ended.
• The comment form and other comments should be visible – Comments are usually seen at the bottom of each article, make them readable, user friendly and emphasize the form where the readers will type in.

It’s not only with the design of the comment area of your blog that you can start encouraging people to leave comments, but from the post itself, questionable and debatable topics usually draw the most comments, entertainment buzzers draw the attention of fans of the respective artists; you need to be creative with every post and not come along with the same tone in every article or expect the comments won’t continue flowing in.

I hope these few tips will help you along with your blogging and increase your comment rate, even if you don’t blog hop too much. But of course, giving is better than receiving, just continue blogging guys!