RSS feed
Twitter
Flickr
Tumblr / robblatt.info
Facebook
Linked in
Digg
MySpace
How do you generate comments for your posts? I’m not sure there’s any answer besides creating a community. For instance, my post on Guillermo Vargas Habacuc draws lots of people in from Google, but there have been no comments left on the story. It has the highest amount of page views, but nothing in terms of comments.
Recently I’ve been going out of my way to leave comments on the personal blogs I read on a regular basis, because I believe in treating others as you want to be treated. This works in some cases, but not all I’m sure. How do you start to build comments on your site?
6 Comments
From what I’ve noticed, the blogs with the most comments either A) ask for comments, B) say something that is likely to piss people off or C) have a really good list or a ton of work put into it that people want to thank you for.
And thanks for commenting on my blog, I believe in comment karma as well!
I find that commenting on others’ weblogs leads to the greatest increase in comments on my own. Otherwise, the only comments I really ever get are from people I know.
Well, not so sure as to how to do this with a blog, but I have noticed that several things help generate more comments on 43things.com
1. one’s interest in others (expressed both via “cheering” as well as via commenting
2. writing about intriguing topics
3. writing intriguing comment headings
4. saying something controversial (although this can backfire as well)
5. saying something useful/new/interesting on a topic that you know your subscribers care about
6. writing something truly of use rather than just writing to write
7. If just writing to express oneself, then being willing to have everyone and/or Noone be interested, and just being happy with whatever happens, because after all, it was worth it if you think it was
8. Last but not least, Asking a Question (just as you did here!)
:)
Rob, what I try to do is write a blog post that can somehow get people involved, so that they want to leave a comment. What you did with this one is the perfect example of that- asking a question. I try to do that for most of mine, even if it’s just “what do you think about ? similar to what some people do with Twitter- “good morning, I just had a dream about a piece of bacon that talks and told me it did not want to be eaten. What did you dream about?” (thats probably more than 140 chars, but thats my gist) and I agree about treating others as you would like to be treated cause it’s just the right thing to do. you don’t have to comment on every posting made by someone who commented on your postings, but its nice to return the favor
I have found that one simple thing to do is encourage the reader to comment, although I don’t think that this is a new think and most people do this. I do think that as you mentioned, commenting on other blogs helps out in many ways. Hence the way I found this blog. I saw a comment from Rob on http://www.theleetgeeks.com . A site I frequent and write for from time to time.
I definitely agree with what people have said above - comment karma works (I follow your website link from a comment you made on my blog to get here, in fact). Asking for comments also works as well, but I’d take that a step further and say that the most successful posts I’ve had in terms of comments are the posts that are specifically written as discussion starters, and ask people to add their thoughts in the comments to keep the discussion going.