How to Get More Comments on Your Blog
About six months ago, I had 1500 blog subscribers—all of whom left few if any comments. On a good day, I would get maybe 8 comments.
On a bad day, I might get zero
It hurt my feelings more than a little.
And it made me wonder: Is anyone actually reading my blog? Or are all of these people pressing the delete button whenever my blog feeds into their inbox? Am I the most unloved blogger on the planet?
I thought about throwing a De-Lurking Party, as I’d read about other bloggers doing that sort of thing. But that seemed, well. In a word? Terrifying. What if I held a party and no one showed?
No, I couldn’t do that. No. No. No. A De-Lurking Party? That was waaaaay too risky.
So I did all of the usual things that people tell you to do in order to get more comments. I ended each post with this line, “Please leave a comment.” I installed the Comment Luv and the Subscribe To Comments plugins. I begged my Twitter followers to please comment on my blog.
Nothing.
Then, one day, I accidentally purchased the wrong size of bed sheets. I opened the package and washed them before realizing the issue. I didn’t know what to do with the dang things, so in the middle of a post Of Cobwebs, Bedsheets and Butter I wrote: Would you like a set of free Bakugan bed sheets? Leave a comment on today’s post that makes me laugh and forget all of my life’s problems and they are yours.
It was a joke. I didn’t think anyone would want them. I mean, seriously? They were kid’s bed sheets. They were already out of the package.
They had Bakugan designs on them.
That post? It generated 23 comments. As the comments flowed in, I danced around my room saying, “Who-hoo. People really do read my blog. Who-ho. People love me.”
Reward Your Readers
Let me tell you something. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Come. Down. From. That. 23 Comments. High.
Did not.
So I decided to give away more stuff.
I included a line from Where the Wild Things Are in one post’s headline and offered to send a chocolate bar to the first reader who figured out the book from which I’d stolen the line.
I won a bunch of dildos at a conference (don’t you just wish you were at THAT conference?), so I gave two away to my readers.
I re-gifted swag. I gave away crap that I didn’t want anymore. I gave, and I gave, and I gave.
Here are some other things that I did:
Created a Reader of the Month award. I give it to one frequent commenter each month.
Thanked my readers. I thanked them in my posts. I thanked them in the comments area. I told them just how much their comments helped inspire me. I told them just had crappy I felt whenever a post did not generate a lot of comments.
Started a Reader Participation post. I did the first one on a morning when I was busy and didn’t have enough time to write a real post. So I posed a question, asking, “What was the best marriage advice you ever got?” In the body, I told readers that they would write the post instead of me. I would, however, reward one commenter with a subscription to Wired magazine. That post? It got 46 comments. Now I regularly post questions—usually ones that were sent to me by readers—and I ask my readers to answer them.
Why Guest Blogging Is An Ideal Link Building Strategy
As a search marketer I have long been looking for an ideal link building model: where everyone’s happy, Google can ban you for selling or buying your link authority, quality wins over quantity and there’s no room for manipulation (note: as a marketer I am well aware of the fact that there’s nothing perfect under the sun. But I wanted something at least better than what we have now).
Currently, the most popular (and the easiest) link building method is still paying for a link (paid reviews, paid editorials, sponsorships, etc). Still, two main reasons why I try to avoid link buying includes:
- Paid links are almost impossible to camouflage: a website selling links has obviously sold quite a few of them, so it is very likely to be flagged for selling links. By buying several links here and there, you are much likely creating a pattern and Google most probably already knows you are doing that (so this is either non-effective or even dangerous);
- The affect from paid link campaigns is somewhat lopsided: you are only paying money for possible ranking increase. A paid link is unlikely to promote your brand or generate you some good, targeted traffic.
Blogging From the Social Media Perspective
photo credit: dimnikolov
They say ‘Owning a Blog is No Longer a Luxury but rather a Necessity’. How true!
And so is social media marketing.
As the real focus of this ebook is on social media and in the true spirit of it, let’s take a look at the meaning of blogging from the s-o-c-i-a-l m-e-d-i-a perspective.
Selling – Blogging opens a window of countless opportunities. One of those is the opportunity to sell your product and/or service. Most bloggers, if not all, are online entrepreneurs who blog passionately for money.
What it takes is trust, credibility and the right product. Just be sure that the kind of product/service you want to sell on your blog should be relevant, of value and could really make a difference in their life.
Read more >>
Sphinn: SEO/Social Media Niche Site
With the seemingly endless number of social sites popping up all over the web, venturing into the world of Social Media and community voting sites can be an exercise in masochism, if you’re not careful. Every site has its own community, its own culture, its own etiquette and its own set of rules & regulations that users are expected to adhere to.
Unlike many social voting based sites, like Digg and Reddit – which tend to have an inherent hostility toward the search marketing industry – Sphinn, which was started by the team at Search Engine Land, caters specifically to the Internet marketing community. Much like other voting sites, the ultimate goal is to generate enough votes to make it to the “Hot Topics” page, which will expose the content to the biggest Sphinn audience.
Being that Sphinn was created by, is moderated by and its community is made up of Internet marketers, it’s no place for the faint of heart. As a rule, the community is somewhat suspicious of newcomers initially and there are some dues to pay before you’re welcomed into the fold. Spammers, the thin-skinned and whiners need not apply. Don’t believe me? Here’s a taste of what my first few weeks at Sphinn were like… Read more >>
Web 2.0 Startups That “Have It”
What’s web 2.0? According to an old joke, for a site to be a web 2.0 startup, it needs to be in beta and have a strange hard-to-pronounce name. With hundreds of so-called web 2.0 startups popping up daily, this joke actually describes the reality. But not everything is that bad. There are still new projects that do have something unique and innovative to offer. I tried to pick those 4 standing out in the crowd that have emerged in 4 different niches:
- search engines;
- social networking;
- social bookmarking and annotating;
- user-generated content.
Compare CognitionSearch is a new enhanced semantic search engine.
Key feature: search Wikipedia using semantic search technology.
What’s so innovative about CognitionSearch? The tool allows to compare their search results with the "simple" search (i.e. Google. Yahoo, and MSN) giving a better idea of what behind the semantic search technology is and how it is different from the conventional or "simple" search. The difference is graphically represented showing you the overlap and the number of unique results for both cognition and simple search. What’s more, it shows you which exactly meaning of the term(s) searched the comparison was based on.
5 Social Media Sites that you must explore
Social media being a fairly recent phenomenon, some marketers still have yet to dip their toes in the social media river. This post is intended to help newcomers get started in the social media world. There are many social sites out there; however, the following 5 should be a part of any social media marketing plan. The following is a synopsis of the author’s 5 favorite social media sites; an in-depth blog relating to each of these sites will follow.
Twitter: Follow Me!
is at the forefront of the current social media craze. If you do not already have a twitter account, you need to get one right now and you can do that here www.twitter.com. (Ok you can finish reading this post first).