How to generate more blog comments

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Jan 29, 2016 / by
How to generate more blog comments

Having comments enabled is not appropriate for every blog, as we covered in a previous article. However, if you have chosen to allow comments on your blog, an abundance of thoughtful messages displayed underneath a post is a tremendous form of social proof (particularly if they are from other thought leaders).


Similar to a social media counter which displays the amount of times a post has been shared, positive comments show that people take what you say seriously and that you are worth listening to, improving your brand reputation as a consequence. We’ve put together some tactics you can employ for increasing the amount of comments on your blog today.

Share the love

If you want the comments section of your blog to be a hive of activity but have never bothered to leave comments on anyone else’s blog, this is extremely, well, short sighted! Peers within your niche need not be treated as competitors that you have to dismantle. Instead, make them your allies by leaving positive feedback on their blog posts. After a while, it may be appropriate to ask them to return the favour by commenting on one of your posts. Commenting on other people’s blogs with legitimate insights will only help to bolster your reputation, which will result in more traffic to your site and hopefully more comments too!

The philosophy of sharing the love extends beyond simply blog comments. It’s also highly recommended that you retweet the content of your peers (and other thought leaders from outside your industry who have contextually relevant content to your posts) and aim to give praise at any opportunity. By referencing thought leaders within your blog posts (succinct quotes work best), you can also contact them on Twitter, politely requesting for them to leave a comment on your blog if they liked the article. You might be pleasantly surprised with the results!

Actively encourage feedback

Actively encourage feedback from people reading your posts...

Actively encourage feedback from people reading your posts…

While it’s excellent to showcase your expertise throughout your content, it’s also important to ask for input from your audience to fill in the blanks in your knowledge. Being an expert doesn’t mean your knowledge is infinite and encouraging feedback from your audience by posing a question at the end of your post can actually help to boost your reputation rather than hinder it.

If your question encourages people to post examples of actions they’ve taken which aligns with the advice you’ve given during your article, this can work as an excellent form of social proof. Neil Patel is particularly good at doing this, as is Kevan Lee from Buffer. As you will also notice, the comments section of Neil Patel’s personal blog and Buffer’s blog section are always thriving with activity.

Additionally, it’s highly advisable to respond to as many of the comments as possible with actionable advice. This strengthens your position as a thought leader and also encourages people to keep commenting since they’re appreciative of being able to open a personal dialogue with a business that they follow.

Be prepared to polarise

One of the best ways to up the activity on your blog is to post a strongly opinionated article, especially when you know the converse viewpoint has a substantial following. As always, if you’re thinking about delivering something which could be regarded as controversial, proceed with caution. Always present your content in a rational tone; impassioned arguments with valid references to back them up are acceptable but scathing personal attacks are not! Delivering polarising content is highly effective at generating comments, but always be careful you’re not doing more harm than good.

One blogger who consistently turns out content which could be regarded as controversial is Steve Pavlina, who vehemently advocates veganism and polyamory while condemning organised religion and 9-5 employment. Certainly not everyone agrees with him but those that do respect his courage. Incidentally, Steve Pavlina removed the comments function from his blog because he was bombarded with so many comments!

In one of her articles, blogger Beth Hayden described learning some valuable lessons from posting a controversial post about Facebook pages. In particular, she learned that negative comments don’t have to be taken personally and it’s not the end of the world if not everyone agrees with you. She states:

“Out of 24 comments on the post, 2 were critical. I was called angry, petty and mean-spirited. I have to admit, that stung a little.

“It helped me to think about the fact that the angry commenters were peeved about the opinion I voiced — not necessarily at me personally. I tried not to feel too hurt by it, particularly because these comments weren’t left by people I personally know.”

Conclusion

If your blog content already has a readership, these tactics will definitely help you to generate comments. However, if your content sucks and you haven’t yet taken the time to grow an audience, no number of tactics are going to get your comments section buzzing.

If you suspect that your content is underwhelming, focus your energy on understanding your audience’s requirements, aim to deliver high value content on a regular basis, and if necessary, redesign your blog to improve aesthetics and navigability. Once your content is unambiguously awesome, then you can really think about optimising your comments section!

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