Best Tips to Get Blog Reader Comments & Increasing Commenting

There are millions of blogs out there and most of them are based on the Most Popular CMS WordPress in the Blogosphere, which is easy to use and handle. Once your blog is established one big requirement would be to get readers to your blog and increase the discussions on the blog pages directly which can make the readers happy and stay connected with them. We need to make sure that we reply to all the comments made by our blog readers and help them in solving their queries because that’s going to keep the reader visit back to our blog and become an active reader. Here are a few tips on how to increase the commenting activity on your blog and how to make sure that most of your blog posts get some comments.

Use Better CMS :

If you are using Blogger.com based blogs service then your readers would have to login to their Google account in order to post a comments which is something everyone would not prefer. I have personally come through many interesting blog posts made by bloggers on their blogspot blogs but the useless commenting section makes me move away from their blog. Move to a script like WordPress where your readers can easily post a comment with just their Name & Email Address being the minimum requirement, and not wasting their time while they post their views on your blog post.

No Registration or Better Commenting Box :

Many bloggers have a habit of enabling the option of ‘Anyone can register‘ on their blogs, followed by enabling the option of ‘Users must be registered and logged in to comment‘ which needs the readers to first signup for that specific blog and then post a comment which would not only take some time but also would need to the reader to enter their email details which is not accepted by everyone. Its better to go for a blog commenting system like Disqus which would save the time of the blog readers along with a option of directly logging into their FaceBook, Twitter, Open ID or Disqus account and post a comment instantly on all the blogs where they have published comments. Check out the sample commenting box below which can give you a better idea.

Thank your Commentators :

You work hard to write blog content but there is a similar amount of efforts made by your readers by posting comments on your blog posts and regularly making you happy. Hence its important for you to thank your commentators by sending a nice email once they have posted a comment on your blog. This is possible by automatically setting up a WordPress plugin called as ‘Thank Me Later’ which once configured will be working in background. You can easily configure the options and send emails to all your commentators on a scheduled time, unique messages etc making the email reader feel that this was a custom email sent to them and make them visit back your blog and get more active.

Separate Trackbacks :

WordPress themes display a list of comments and trackbacks below the Blog Post content and this is normally displayed based on the date. If your blog is getting good number of visitors, then there are chances that you would be getting a good number of trackbacks which in most case is from Spam Blogs which copy a part of your content and link back which is displayed below the post under the trackbacks. A better suggestion would be to either completely remove all the trackbacks or else separate them from your blog comments and display them at the end. We have published an article on how to Separate Trackbacks from Comments in WordPress which if implemented correctly can help you.

Run Contests :

Contact advertisers and sponsors in your Blogging niche and ask them to help you in running weekly and monthly based contests for your blog which can help you in getting more comments. Your job would be organized and manage these contests by discussing the plans with the sponsors and then publishing the same on your blog followed by asking your blog readers to comment with some replies related to the contest. This would easily help you gain huge number of comments along with increase your blog subscribers. Contests not only bring your comments but also regular flow of visitors who visit your blog for the next content and try to win again, making this option a free way to gain everything with your job only being to work on the contest organization and management.

Ask Opinions & Feedback :

If you have a very good fan following then its suggested that you should start having scheduled posts on asking your Blog readers regularly with their opinions and feedback. This could be on some hot topic, trend or the best news of the week following which you offer your readers to suggest you some views on specific topic, which would make them post comments on your blog. Also whenever you make any changes on your blog, its suggested that you ask for thoughts in the form of comments which would make your readers post the feedback and also increase activity on your Blog.

Respond to Everyone :

The final and most important suggestion would be to respond to all of the comments you receive on your blog. Practically it’s not possible for every blogger to respond to all the comments because that a huge task once the blog gets huge traffic which in our case is around 50 comments per day, hence replying to all these 50 comments is not an easy task. Along with this many of the news articles get comments but the commentators are having views or comments related to the specific brand, product or news and the bloggers cannot reply on behalf on them. Whenever you respond to a comment, then the commentator would feel happy and may respond back again or make a note of your blog by either recommending it to a friend or else bookmark it for reading more replies. If you find that a comment is specifically posted to the article author then you need to make sure that its responded asap for more interaction and making the reason feel that they are given priority.

You can also use different plugins of ratings the blog comments, use option of tweeting the comments, subscribe to comments, rewarding the highest commentators, comment on other blogs etc for making the whole blog a successful one.