How Comments Can Make You Lose Readers
ADVERTISEMENTSComments in a blog can be very useful in converting first time visitors into regular readers. Why? Because when someone visits your blog for the first time, they may get a good impression when they see a lot of people commenting on your blog posts.
But what if your blog is new or has low traffic? Most of your posts will then have no comments and it will likely turn away new visitors as they will feel that no one reads your blog.
In this situation the best thing to do is to disable comments and enable it back when you have about 500 unique visitors a day or say about 100 RSS subscribers.
What would you do when you start a new blog? Will you leave your comment section enabled or will you be smart enough to disable it?
Another tip for bloggers with a new blog: Are you Advertising your lack of Readers?
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Posted on December 5th, 2006 | Category: Blogging |
Ajay D'Souza
December 6, 2006 at 12:49 am
Will disagree with this strategy. If I find comments disabled on a blog, I don’t bother returning.
What irritates me even more is if I need to register to comment. Then too I just close the window and never bother to read the blog.
Fanatyk
December 6, 2006 at 3:25 am
I was smart enough to leave comments ON.
Even when you got low number of comments - the worst You can do is disabling comments.
Enblogopedia
December 6, 2006 at 3:53 am
can’t say more..:)
Ignoring
December 6, 2006 at 4:15 am
I have not applied this theory to my own brand, but it is not that hard to get a few friends to post comments every day on your blog. Especially if that blog has intentions or potential to be a “bread and butter” blog. If not then, it is worth it to consider hiding comments. Plus if you are doing things right it will not take that long, maybe under two months to get 500 readers.
Everton
December 6, 2006 at 5:01 am
Totally agree with the other posters. John - I think you keep forgetting that most new users come direct from a search engine to a particular article. They aren’t going to notice that the majority of your posts don’t have comments.
Even, if you get no traffic on a site, this can change overnight. I’ve got an experimental blog that went from no traffic to lots overnight because of one good post that picked up - I would have missed out if I’d turned off comments.
Utah SEO Blog
December 6, 2006 at 5:29 am
Yeah, I’ll have to agree with the other folks here. I hate it when I have to register to post comments.
While there is a little more sense of community on a highly-commented blog I still return to the less-commented just as frequently thanks to RSS. If it’s updated I go back.
For me, what keeps me coming back is the content.. not the comments.
siong1987
December 6, 2006 at 8:48 am
I got another question here. Will you all moderate your comments?
Vivek
December 6, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Are you insane ??? Disable comments !!!
that’s the last thing a new blogger wants to do.
Miriam
December 6, 2006 at 1:25 pm
I recently started a blog, and one of the main goals is to encourage a conversation between visitors. There is so much we can learn from each other, and I love to hear what other people have to say. So I’m less worried about how my blog looks, then discouraging people from participating.
Ashok
December 6, 2006 at 2:56 pm
John, no one is buying your this theory. I think comment is neccessary for new blog also and it may help to popularise blog. My blog is not very old, but I started receiving comment since begining. It encourage blogger to write new article.
WSLiang
December 6, 2006 at 6:21 pm
I’ve just started a new blog. I didn’t disable it too.
Manas
December 6, 2006 at 7:24 pm
It is not necessary to disable comments until you get some RSS readers or significant amount of traffic !
I never judge an blog article by the number of comments it has ..
Ari
December 6, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Interesting post.
SEOmoz had a similar discussion back a couple months ago. The title of the post was “21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic” and suggestion number 6 stated that new blogs should be launched without comments. They state that once you have up to 100 RSS subscribers or 750 unique hits then you should turn on comments. The reason being that “Comments are often how tech-savvy new visitors judge the popularity of a site.”
Well I dont know if I agree. I launched my blog without comments and friend said that I should turn it on so I did. It really depends on the content. I believe my blog is original and I provide great information for a selected niche therefore people will come to my blog irregardless. Now after reading the comments above I think I will visit a few of the commenters blogs.
JohnTP
December 6, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Everton-
When a new user visits this blog from a search engine they mostly read many related posts too,thanks to the related wordpress plugin. And when they read other posts they will surely notice if my posts have comments or not.
siong1987- I moderate comments only when necessary.
Ashok-
Bloggers like you who comment regularly on other blogs will surely get comments
JohnTP
December 6, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Other than content, visitors use other factors like comments, RSS subscribers, BlogTopSites Ranking, Alexa Ranking,etc to judge if your blog is popular. That is why I ask you to disable these for a new blog until you get good traffic.
Miriam
December 7, 2006 at 12:43 am
After posting my comment, one of your other commenters decided to check out my two week old blog and left me two comments! What would have been if I had turned off the comment feature (shudder, horror)?
manukhanna
December 7, 2006 at 1:53 am
It all depends on how open are you to receiving criticism/advice/good wishes from visitors.
Everton
December 7, 2006 at 3:27 am
John
Are you sure about that? how many pages do your readers read on average per visit, particularly new readers? related posts help but you are definitely wrong in saying that new readers read ‘many’ related posts
Anshul
December 7, 2006 at 8:04 pm
Well this is a contentious issue. If you ask me I wud not be bothered about the comments of the blog. For me layout and content are very important. John’s site is very neat and I visit four times a day even if there is no new post.
I guess readers will revisit the site based on the content and not on the no of comments.
JohnTP
December 7, 2006 at 9:08 pm
I have the same thing to say just as Ari -
So it is my opinion that new blogs should have comments disabled till they have good traffic.
sourcer
December 7, 2006 at 9:43 pm
I didn’t disabled my comments and i my blog is doing very well now
Ari
December 10, 2006 at 8:29 am
After thinking about this discussion over the weekend, I decided that I am going disable my comment feature despite what I wrote above in comment #13. There are two reasons why I decided to make this decision:
1. In reality people do judge the success of a blog by the number of comments. I am not relying on information I read on the web rather thats how I used to rate a blog. If I visited a blog and didnt see any comments unless there was really interesting content I would generally ignore the blog. Now I am more mature about it and I understand that there are people like myself who are just starting out and it takes time to get comments. Thats fine but in reality the rest of web surfing world doesnt think that way. No comments, no interest.
2. Another reason and probably more important reason is that I tend to pay attention to the fact that I dont have comments and I think it affects my performance. If I dont have the comment feature enabled I wont be worried about people commenting or not. I can therefore focus my strength on dishing out important posts. Think of it like this, if a performer got up to perform in a room with one or two people he would be focusing on the fact that he only has two people watching him. On the other hand if there is a big spotlight shining on his face and he cant see the audience he has no idea how many people are watching. This way he’ll be able to concentrate more on his routine and with a good routine more people will come.
So as a result I will be turning off my comment feature for now. Its not so bad. People could always email me requesting that I turn it on when the time comes.
JohnTP
December 10, 2006 at 8:56 am
Ari- Congrats for making the decision, you can always turn on the comment feature when you want
fuad
December 10, 2006 at 9:48 pm
disabling comment will have more people giving trackback at your post. there’s always pros and cons.
JohnTP
December 11, 2006 at 6:50 am
faud- I noticed that after I disabled comments in older posts
listikal
December 13, 2006 at 12:28 pm
I have to disagree here as well. I find it annoying as hell when I can’t comment or comments aren’t posted for days on end. One such site is Quick Online Tips. Although he does allow comments and he does have 4000+ readers, I find myself reading your blog way more John, because my comments pop-up right away.
JohnTP
December 13, 2006 at 12:54 pm
listikal- I have wondered many times why blogs like Quick Online Tips and Digital Inspiration that have 4000+ RSS readers and good traffic but get comments very rarely.
The reason could be that they just keep posting and forget to encourage comments?
Here on my blog I love to get comments and try to encourage readers to comment as much as possible
Ari
December 13, 2006 at 9:19 pm
I’m Back. Ok John isnt paying me to say this I just think this is important.
Please turn off the comment feature until you have enough readers. Please.
The evidence is out there. People will turn away from a blog if there a no or very few comments posted anywhere.
The reason why I am pleading is because a good friend of mine has his comment feature turned on and he has almost no comments. Its looks really bad. Yeah he got a comment from Darren of Problogger a few weeks ago but that was just because he met him at an event. Now he has no comments and even I dont feel like posting a comment. I dont even feel like reading his posts. It seems like he’s talking to no one just to be heard.
And even if you had a few comments here and there in the beginning if it starts to slow down and you have like ten posts without comments then shut off the feature. You can always turn it back on.
Sorry for another long comment.
JohnTP
December 13, 2006 at 9:33 pm
I know some bloggers that get discouraged to continue blogging just because they get less comments.
But if you have your comments turned off, you won’t have to worry anymore on the comments and focus more on the content
And Ari, you don’t have to always apologize for your long comments, I actually enjoy reading them
Robert Irizarry
December 17, 2006 at 4:27 pm
I’ll have to disagree on this one. What happens to blogs that target a niche? These type of blogs may never achieve the kinds of numbers you suggest. In addition, disabling comments takes away one of the most attractive aspects of blogging - the opportunity to interact directly with your readers.
That said, I do agree that bloggers should be aware of the impression they create when they, for example, “advertise” that they have zero readers subscribed to their blog. I think that’s a huge mistake that creates a poor impression of the site’s content.