9 Comment Boosters For Your Blog

Comments to a blog post are no less than oxygen to our life. The magnitude of engagement of readers is known very well through comments. Along with revealing famousness of the blog, comments are useful to share information, feedback, and experiences.

It surely adds traffic to your blog, but we aren’t looking at that aspect here. It is helpful in many other ways to a blogger and the readers as well. Maybe I will write a post about the usefulness of comments very soon.

However, let me reveal 9 ways to boost the number of comments on your blog.

• Encourage Discussion:
  Do this. At the end of every article, ask your readers to discuss the topic and share ideas on the post. Let me repeat, THIS ISN’T FOR TRAFFIC. This helps you tremendously to become a better blogger. People share new ways of writing. They let you know where you went wrong. Many of my readers have experienced what I haven’t. So I learn from them. You learn to look at an issue from numerous angles with the help of comments.
• Leave your Blog:
  And visit other blogs. Comment there. Don’t just sit back and wait for comments. They will come to you only if you do it to others. Get out of your blog and get involved.

• Interact with readers:
  Replying to the comments is the most important element of a blog, most often forgotten by bloggers. I would prefer talking to a streetlamp than to someone who ignores me. If some reader has asked a question, reply at any cost. If you don’t know the answer, don’t be ashamed to say that you don’t know much about it and you will get back to him/her after researching on it.
• Value added comments:
  Whenever you post a comment on other’s blog or reply a comment on your post, remember to provide some piece of information in it. A comment cannot be of 2-3 words. It has to be 2-3 sentences without grammar mistakes, with person’s name, a question (optional), and information.
• Connect with them everywhere:
  It isn’t important that your blog reader cannot be your chat friend or cannot contact you by email. In fact, you initiate contacting them through various sources. Let them feel a sense of belongingness and unity.
• Keep it simple:
  Commenting on you post shouldn’t be a tedious process. Don’t ask them to login or fill a captcha entry or fill some weird form just to leave a comment. This would avoid most people from commenting. If you are concerned about spasm, get a spam filter.
• Rewarding them:
  Reward your readers for commenting on your posts. You can opt to advertise their posts on your blog or provide page rank. You could also promote their twitter status. And there are various other options for rewarding them. If they get something, people will happily comment on your blog.
• Display your top Commenter:
  Create a separate tab on your blog that mentions 5 or 10 names of ‘top commenter’ on your blog. These names have a direct link to their blog. This will boost their ego and their page rank. They know it and hence they will comment more.
• Lastly, do something different:
  The above mentioned steps are generally adopted by many bloggers. However, to get a real boost in the number of comments on your blog, be creative and do something that no one has thought about. May be offering an ebook on blogging to the top commenter of the year. Or something like that. Make sure that it’s exciting.

That’s it. Let me know what the other ways to increase comments are.