4 Ways to Encourage Comments on Your Blog
Our host today is Matthew Lyle. If you're interested in getting in front of the readers of Site Sketch 101, check out our guest posting invitation here.
A great post was put up here on Site Sketch in July titled “How To Get More Comments on Your Blog”. It outlined four ways to encourage people to comment on your blog and had some really good tips. This is a continuation of that post showing four more quick ways you can encourage comments on your blog.
1. Ask For Them
Let your readers know you want comments by opening your blog up for discussion. Ask questions of your readers that are relevant to the topic and will make people want to share their opinion. For example, after you list your favorite widgets, ask your readers what their favorites are. People are shy; letting them know you want to hear what they have to say will help.
2. Use Third-Party Comment Software
Using third-party comment software such as Comment Luv will give other bloggers a reason to comment: a little more exposure. Intense Debate will add a whole plethora of new features to your comment section to facilitate reader engagement. Using something such as Subscribe to Comments will make it easier to get people back to your website to continue commenting. There are lots of plugins available, make use of them.
3. Display Recent Comments
Showing recent comments in a prominent place on your website will help get people into the commenting mood. Nobody wants to be the first to comment on a blog, so displaying others doing it will ease people into the idea. It transforms a blog from a writer and reader atmosphere to a discussion. An added bonus in threaded comments is that it will give more content for somebody to reply to. They won’t only see what you have to say but they’ll see what others have to say as well.
4. Display Top Commenters
Everybody likes seeing their name up in lights. Once somebody starts to crawl up this list, they’ll have reason to keep going. And as we all know, more comments make people comment more.
A Note from Nick
Nicholas Cardot: I’ve met very few bloggers who don’t want comments on their articles. They encourage us, they educate us, and they enlighten us to the needs and desires of our readers. I’ve said it hear on Site Sketch 101 several times that comments are the life-blood of a successful blog.
So you want comments on your site? Take these tips from Matt and put them to work for you. Engage your readers. Reward their comments. Feed their ego.
Wayne from iDetectorist.com said:
I hope you don’t mind me leaving a comment
Just curious about the “top commentors” suggestion – are there widgets available that will take care of that?
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David | ilcantone.com said:
Yes, there are some widgets to show your top commentators. Search: “Top Commentators Widget” on google. Besides, the widget has many options to change and play with. And if you want to encourage more your readers to comment you should activate the option “dofollow”.
My configuration options for the widget:
I have a top commentators list with 6 members; I don’t show the amount of comments has posted them; is a DoFollow list; and very important-> exclude yourself from the list, because it’s obvious that you will have more comments than anyone else
.
Regrads
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Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> If you don’t have more comments than everyone else then something is wrong! LOL. I set mine to reset monthly.
David | ilcantone.com said:
Jejeje Yes you’re right.
I did the same, I set the list to reset monthly, I think it’s the best choice.
Nick What do you think about showing or hiding the number of comments. Why do you show it? I decided to hide it but maybe I’m wrong.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> I think that it shows readers that others have already gotten involved and in a way it encourages them to join the fun.
Blake @ props blog ideas said:
In addition to what dave said about the plugin, remember to point out being linked to from the main page is worth more link juice than other pages.
Also being a top commentator puts links to your page on every page on the site (unless you choose to only make it show on your main page).
Nicholas Cardot said:
Blake @ props blog ideas –> That true. So you’ll have a link back on all 50, 100, or 1,000 pages of someone’s site. Great point.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Wayne from iDetectorist.com –> Ha ha. There sure are. I use the top commentators widget for WordPress.
wayne from idetectorist.com said:
Thanks guys. I installed the top commentators widget and it’s taking care of things smoothly. Thanks for the post!
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Dawn said:
I really want to try some of these suggestions to encourage commenting and I really like the idea of being able to have visitors subscribe to comments with a 3rd party plug in.
I clicked on all your suggested links for the plug in’s and they don’t seem to be linked up. I’m also curious if there is a plug in in for typepad users?
Thank you
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Dawn –> I’m really not familiar with typepad so I can’t really help you with that. You’ll have to do a little bit of independent research. All the links seem to work for me. That’s strange.
Dawn said:
Yes I’m looking into what I can do with typepad… At first the links didn’t work for me but they do now…
Thank you!
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Dawn –> I’m glad to hear that they’re working now. I now how annoying broken links can be.
Chad said:
Great suggestions, thanks for posting. I’m new to the blogging game and still trying to figure out how to get people commenting. I had completely glossed over some of these ideas.
I like the comment leaderboard you have.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Chad –> Thanks. Hopefully we’ll have you on that leader board soon.
Dana @ Online Knowledge said:
Comment is really important part of bloging. I really suggest to use subscribe to comment facility for better discussion.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Dana @ Online Knowledge –> I agree. I think that is a great tool especially if you can build ongoing conversations.
BlogInterface.net said:
Yes, Subscribe to Comments and CommentLuv are plugins you must use on your blog. But I see that more and more, especially new blogs, don’t use Subscribe to Comment. That is bad because the readers won’t come back if they aren’t notified about new comments. You can’t expect from readers that they remember all the blogs the commented.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
BlogInterface.net –> That’s exactly right. If you can encourage real conversation then you’ll definitely want to notify your readers of updates to it.
David | ilcantone.com said:
I’d like so much to receive more comments on my blog. I agree 100% with you Nick:comments are the life-blood of a successful blog, and let me say that you are doing a great work on this subject.
Guess what! my comments section doesn’t have the “reply” option. It’s very frustrating for me. I don’t know, maybe there are some code wandering around the internet that could fix it. Maybe I should to add “Intense debate” or maybe I should just change the theme.
What do you suggest me?
By the way, great post Matthew
.
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Huzzer Magazine said:
Actually there is thread comment option which you can use to add reply button in your comment section.
This will probably handy for you….
WordPress Admin > Discussions > Other Comment Settings > Enable Threaded Comments
Good Luck!
Nicholas Cardot said:
Huzzer Magazine –> That should do it. I forgot to even mention that.
David | ilcantone.com said:
OOooohh! You’re right, it works! Thank you so much for your help. Huzzer, I owe you a favour
.
Have a nice day.
Dave
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Nicholas Cardot said:
I’m glad that you found that solution. I’m excited for you.
My Latest Blog Post: 4 Ways to Encourage Comments on Your Blog
Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> Try adding this to your comments.php
< ?php echo comment_reply_link(array('before' => '', 'after' => '', 'reply_text' => 'Reply to this Comment', 'add_below' => $add_below, 'depth' => $depth, 'max_depth' => $args['max_depth'] )); ?>Just remove the space after the < and before the ?
http://twitter.com/LilyGiraud said:
Thank you a very useful post , I am starting to learn about blogging and was thinking how to start to build my audience and promote it. Lily
Knowledge never decreases by being shared -lilygiraud
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Nicholas Cardot said:
http://twitter.com/LilyGiraud –> I like your quote about knowledge never decreasing. If you’re trying to learn about blogging then you’ve come to the right site!
John Samuel said:
I am using CommentLuv for a long time and it has helped me to get a lot of comments in a period of time
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Nicholas Cardot said:
John Samuel –> I really like CommentLuv. I actually just added it recently.
InternetHow Blog said:
I’ve been doing most of them on my blog. And recently I added top comentator competition and it showed some effects.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
InternetHow Blog –> I’m glad to hear that. It’s always nice to see that positive boost.
David | ilcantone.com said:
Yes, I agree with Nick. You had a great idea running the competition.
One question: Who do provide the banner?
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Matt said:
Hey guys. Make sure you check into Disqus too. I just started using it and it’s pretty sweet, I’d say. It allows more ways of “signing in” and replaces subscribe to comments.
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Huzzer Magazine said:
Hi Matt,
Don’t you think the Disqus and Intense Debate will demotivate readers not to leave comment?
It is because personally it make the process of leaving comments to be harder.
I prefer the site that has simple comment section which will make the process easy and quick.
What do you think Matt?
Nicholas Cardot said:
Huzzer Magazine –> It can make it harder but they don’t require a login so they still work well. If they require a login then they will definitely reduce comments.
Matt said:
I don’t find it harder at all. You can still post as a guest.
And you can style it just the same as regular comments, Nick. There’s a whole lot of CSS classes in Disqus.
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Derek Jensen said:
I personally have found that it really relates to your target audience. For me most college students see a the Disqus system to be somewhat intimidating.
Here is a question to ask yourself. Are you providing third party commenting system because you like it or are you providing it because that is what your audience wants? Vise versa of course when using non-third part commenting systems.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Matt –> I’ve seen disqus work out nicely for some people, but I love being able to edit my comments capabilities and styles in the default WordPress comments.
Chase said:
I like to make an effort to responding to as many comments as possible as they are coming in. This takes a few minutes out of the day yes, but I have found that it connects me to my readers more and they feel like their comments are being heard.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Chase –> Taking the time to respond and engage with readers is a great way to get more people to interact with you. I’m completely with you on that.
Tycoon Blogger said:
Good tips, I use them all and they work. Comment luv is great, keyword luv is better!
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Tycoon Blogger –> I’ll have to look into KeywordLuv. It sounds good.
Blake @ props blog ideas said:
Another thing you can do it to have dofollow comments. A lot of blogs nofollow their comments to prevent people from using up their page rank.
Little do they know, nofollow is just wasted link juice.
I know that I am way more likely to comment on a dofollow blog multiple times than a nofollow blog.
I am certain others are the same way
Jay Medina said:
Comments are very important in blogs. What i do is put anchor text that has a link that is worth it. But somehow some moderators don’t accept my blog comments even though it is so relevant to the topic the they posted..
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ZXT said:
Wow a comment article with lots of comments.
Commenting is the first thing I’ve learned to promote your blog. Aside from the backlinks you’ll be getting, you’ll also get a visit from the blog owner itself and from its visitors.
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Roschelle said:
Really great tips. A few other great ways are making commenting easier by removing those dreadful moderation obstacles. I know because of spam they are a necessary evil. But if at all possible try to get rid of them.
Commenting on blogs of those who’ve commented on yours is another courteous gesture that will boost your comments
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Teen Blogger said:
Great Post.
I agree that installing the top commentator plugin will increase comments as everyone will want to get in the lsit.
Another way to get more comments is by making your blog do follow.
Roschelle said:
Great point Teen Blogger. Changing your blog from nofollow to DoFollow is an added incentive for any blogger!
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Web Hosting Sites said:
Top Commentators is a great way to acknowledge your readers and let everyone know who is involved with the dialogue on your site.
.
All in all it is very important to have participation in your blog. It is how you get people to come back to it
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Ron Boracay said:
Actually, there are so many ways to encourage comments in your blog, but, I must say that the above tips are the greatest thing to promote comments.
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Adrianne said:
Great article explaining how to accomplish more comments. I certainly have had some trouble as a new blog in trying to get comments.
You mentioned third party software from CommentLuv. I tried finding the site but couldn’t. Would you have the link for the software?
Thanks for your insight,
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Adrianne –> http://www.commentluv.com/
A.D.K. said:
This are surely very useful tips. Thanks for sharing this ideas.
chandan said:
Yes all are some nice tips for encourage people to comment on blog. I have also installed disqus commentator form on my blog and also top commentator widget on my blog.
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Extreme John said:
Somehow your blog fell out of my feed reader and thanks to Tycoon Blogger I found it and re-added it again.
Four very simple tips for increasing comments and very well put, it amazes me how many people never even consider #1.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Extreme John –> I’m sorry that it fell out of your reader but I’m thrilled that you came back and added it again. It’s great to have you back.