Essential to building a successful blog is having people engage with your content. One of the primary metrics of true engagement comes from looking at the comments section.
Are people taking the time to share their thoughts and opinions on your posts, whether positive or negative? Are they asking questions? Are they furthering the discussion? If so, that’s a good indicator you’re creating engaging, compelling content.
If not, it’s time to do something about it.
The following are some reasons people aren’t commenting, and some ways you can encourage them to interact with your blog.
Are You Making It Easy?
Everything you do regarding your site design needs to be user-friendly and centered around making it effortless for readers to engage with your site, share content and generally find their way around.
Put yourself in the shoes of your average user and navigate around your comment system. Are you making people log in to leave comments, or click through multiple buttons to get there? Maybe you make them scroll to some remote region of your blog to do it.
Any of these things are comment killers, so if you want to boost engagement, make sure your comment system is easy to find and easy to use. Make the steps to leave a comment as minimal and no-fuss as possible.
As an additional note, if you’re using captcha, you’re more than likely eliminating the possibility of getting a lot of comments, and you might want to think about eliminating it.
Do You Evoke Emotion?
If your posts evoke absolutely no emotion, chances are you’re not going to get a lot of comments on them. You’ll notice that most posts where there are the most comments have elicited some type of emotional response from the reader, even if it’s somewhat negative.
It’s okay to have readers disagree with you, as long as your blog post was constructive and respectful.
In fact, you might want to create blog posts that are designed to bring out a strong negative or positive response, since that’s such a good way to get people talking.
Are You Commenting On Other Blogs?
When you’re a blogger, it’s important to become part of a community. You need to be active in your niche, and that includes commenting on other blogger’s sites.
If you’re doing that on a regular basis and building relationships with other bloggers and their readers, you’re much more likely to get comments and engagement on your own site.
You can also build a sense of reciprocity by sharing content from other blogs.
The more people feel like you’re engaging with their content, the more likely they are to do the same for you.
Do You Respond To Comments?
Whether you get one comment or 50 on a post, it’s critical that you’re responding. Don’t just respond with a generic, canned answer.
Instead, give your responses thought and craft them in a way that encourages the conversation to continue.
This not only increases overall engagement for your blog but also makes your readers feel appreciated and like you’re interested in building a relationship with them.
Increasing engagement on your blog is a big challenge, but seeing how many comments you have on your posts is a good indicator, so make sure you’re not making any of the mistakes listed above, and if you are, use the simple fixes that are listed.
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