How To Get More Comments On Your Blog
ADVERTISEMENTSReaders have asked me several times on how I manage to get so many comments on almost every post I make. Jamdo Rob was the most recent reader to ask me this question and he suggested that I make a post on it.
hi John - I am really enjoying your blog lately. I was wondering if you might consider a post on how you manage to get so many comments on almost every post you make? It would be an interesting read!
There are already a lot of posts written on how to increase comments on a blog. Here are some of them:
- 10 techniques to get more comments on your blog
- 10 tips for attracting more comments
- How to increase comments on your blog
- Encourage your first time commenters
- Get your Blog lurkers to comment
- Getting people to comment on your new blog
These are some of the things I have done to increase comments on this blog:
-
Encourage lurkers to comment: I once put up a post asking lurkers to tell me a bit about themself and it encouraged some of them to leave a comment. May be you can try it too
- Ask Questions: Asking questions at the end of posts encourages readers to leave comments.
- Interact: When readers leave comments, be sure to reply back or ask questions again to continue the discussion.
- Notify commenters of new comments: If you own a WordPress blog, install the Subscribe to Comments plugin which allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. This encourages readers to come back and take part in the conversation.
- Reward commenters: You can further encourage comments on your blog by rewarding your commenters. I do this by using the Show Top Commentators WordPress Plugin and by linking good posts from top commenter’s blogs once in a while.
- Making it easy to comment: This blog does not use a captcha or require you to register to leave a comment and therefore this makes it easy for readers to comment.
- WordPress Plugins: If you own a WordPress blog, check out the plugins that can help increase comments.
Have you increased comments on your blog? Tell us how you did it.
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Posted on June 16th, 2007 | Category: Blogging |
Nirmal
June 16, 2007 at 11:31 pm
Great list and Thanks for including my link.
JohnTP
June 16, 2007 at 11:38 pm
No problem. I really liked the post
lyndonmaxewell
June 17, 2007 at 12:17 am
Sometimes I guess that the captcha doesn’t really stop spammers from spamming though. Seems that even when I closed my comments box, spam comments still keeps coming in!
Lars-Christian
June 17, 2007 at 2:30 am
I wrote an article on this topic a while back for Bloggst. You can see it here. The two most important points here is to make it as simple as possible for people to comment, and motivate them to commenting by giving the extra incentive, and not just expect them to comment for the sake of the conversation.
It’s amazing how selfish we are, isn’t it?
Vijay Teach Me
June 17, 2007 at 3:03 am
Hi John,
I guess it is the trust factor which you or all successful bloggers have built with their readers which in turn encourages us to leave the comments.
Vijay
kay
June 17, 2007 at 6:49 am
hi lyndonmaxewell , maybe you should try Askimet Plugin to prevent comment spammer.
Jamdo
June 17, 2007 at 7:41 am
That’s a great post, John (thanks for the link, by the way). Looks like I have a little work to do to catch up to your level!
Shankar Ganesh
June 17, 2007 at 8:05 am
Nice write-up. I’ve found that commenting on other blogs gets new people to come over to yours and comment. And with the subscribe to comments plugin, the comments just increase.
Shashank
June 17, 2007 at 8:07 am
another interesting read ..good to see some best resources at one place.
Alex Panait
June 17, 2007 at 10:30 am
Joining the “U comment, I follow” campaign can be a good solution for getting more commentators. I have recently blogged about this.
Grace
June 17, 2007 at 10:30 am
Those are great tips! I was going to write a post on increasing comments, but there are so many of those out there already. Good job in rounding them up!
Alex Panait
June 17, 2007 at 10:33 am
John, lyndonmaxewell has a point there regarding spam comments. Maybe you can tell us how do you manage to moderate all your comments.
JohnTP
June 17, 2007 at 2:29 pm
lyndonmaxewell- how do you receive spam comments after disabling comments?
Alex Panait- I moderate comments left by first time commentators on this blog, this way I am able to prevent spam comments that escape from Akismet.
horisly
June 17, 2007 at 3:48 pm
great tips lists.
i think “feed + good comment marketing idea” is the easy combination for more comments.
listikal
June 17, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Readership is obviously a big factor too. I mean he’s averaging over 1500 RSS subscribers? He had around 500 lasst fall. The few months he’s gained a ton of new readers that want to post a comment on his blog.
MoneyNing
June 18, 2007 at 9:55 am
The top commentator add-on does so much to encourage comments. Definitely a great plugin!
Ashok
June 18, 2007 at 1:23 pm
One of the reason, I comment is because of top commentator plugin. It really encourage commentator
Wallace
June 18, 2007 at 6:16 pm
i agree with Alex,
install ”U comment, I follow” much can increase readers to left comments,but it may not fair for your blog’s advertiser who pay money for textlinks or post.
please check back BloggingTips.com,
http://www.bloggingtips.com/20.....w-dilemma/
Alex Panait
June 18, 2007 at 6:37 pm
I noticed that you moderate first time commentators but I suppose you receive a lot of spam every day and in that spam maybe there are good comments. Do you have time to review all the spam or you don’t do that ?
Grace
June 18, 2007 at 8:36 pm
JohnTP- I think moderating first time commenters’ comments is a very good idea! But I don’t get a lot of spam yet, so I will just leave it for now.
kay
June 18, 2007 at 9:23 pm
Another question about Show Top Commentators WordPress Plugin. What is the best period to renew the list?? daily, weekly, monthly or yearly?
JohnTP
June 19, 2007 at 12:03 am
Alex Panait- Before deleting the spam comments I check for good comments.
kay- It depends on how much comments you get for your blog. If you get a lot of comments you can try weekly otherwise use monthly.
Gili
June 19, 2007 at 2:25 am
Importnat info. I specially liked the one from performancing.com.
Madhur Kapoor
June 19, 2007 at 10:02 am
Nice info John . I feel that the more you interact with other bloggers , the more comment you are likely to get .
CristianR
June 19, 2007 at 10:08 pm
I haven’t actually increased the number of the comments on my blog , but i am constantly working on it . This article proved to be a great resource , thank you !
Vlad
June 19, 2007 at 11:16 pm
I have found that removing “nofollow” from the links in the comments are may help to encourage commenting.
But I guess it is not an issue for this blog.
Internet Tv
June 21, 2007 at 8:01 pm
great list of resources. checked them all out.
David Bradley
June 21, 2007 at 8:58 pm
Here’s the killer tip for getting more comments on your blog
It’s slightly dubious, possibly dangerous, and almost certainly unethical, so why not give it a try?
db
Gili
June 23, 2007 at 2:45 am
David,
Nice link bait buddy.
However, a blogger that implements your suggestion will look a bit funny (to say the least).
I doubt that a serious blogger will be willing to give up his professional accuracy for a bunch of comments.
My 0,02
Gili
Cybersurge.org
June 23, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I love getting comments but don’t get very many at all, I’ll try the subscribe to comments plugin and the top commenters plugin, hopefully that will help encourage comments
Roberta
June 23, 2007 at 11:38 pm
I think I will do that first time commentator moderation idea. I still get spam on my blog, mostly from oldddddd posts.
Internet Tv
June 25, 2007 at 1:01 am
great list
Julian
June 25, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Which post of yours do you like JohnTP
D'Juan
June 26, 2007 at 4:13 am
My site is all about console gaming and I get a decent amount of comments, but half of them are mine, friends and my co-editor engaging new users’ comments and trying to start up conversation.
I’ll have to start asking opinions a lot more often, and leaving a bit to the imagination on my editorials. I tend to cover all the bases (or at least try to) and leave little else to be discussed, so thanks for the tip!
horisly
June 26, 2007 at 9:52 am
connectedinternet.co.uk is doing a good job.
CristianR
June 27, 2007 at 12:13 pm
it’s the truth you’re talking horisly , connectedinternet is really doing a good job .
MoneyNing
June 28, 2007 at 11:08 am
Great links! Thank you for them.
Major League Soccer News
July 5, 2007 at 3:39 am
Great list. Get enough traffic and comments will start flowing in !
Larry
July 5, 2007 at 1:49 pm
Thanks for the tips. I might have to try “Show Top Commentators WordPress Plugin”. let’s see how it works.
horisly
July 8, 2007 at 8:47 am
john,
you have not update your site for several days.
does the traffic drop?
“show top commentators” may cause spam comments, if you don’t update your site.
Ram
July 8, 2007 at 8:06 pm
Comments make our blog look professional. It is tough to get comments on new blogs. Thanks for the good post.
Russell Wagner
July 10, 2007 at 9:12 am
Hey thanks for the great list of the useful links!
katyzzz
July 10, 2007 at 12:43 pm
John,
You really seem to know what you’re talking about and I am going to return to your post to go through your ideas more thoroughly.
I have created a link to you here for my readers.
Congratulations on a job well done.
katyzzz
green
July 10, 2007 at 4:42 pm
I encourage people to comment on my articles and i asks questions to visitors.
Harry Potter 7
July 13, 2007 at 12:43 am
I think you need delete the comments queue :p, that is not good in a blog (i think)
JTPRATT's Blogging Mistakes
July 19, 2007 at 9:41 pm
Another tip is to make sure that your comments stand out. You’ve done a really nice job of doing that on your blog JohnTP with some great style - the myBlogLog pic/avatar is a great touch, and I like the way you’ve numbered them. They stand out, which makes them compelling and you want to read them….which also makes you want to leave a comment. It’s kinda contagious!
Andre Santos
July 24, 2007 at 2:22 am
Great list of articles, ima read all of them now.
Study Guide
July 25, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Awesome post John! I subscribed just a few days ago but Ive begun to enjoy this blog a lot already. Keep it up.
Stefson
August 8, 2007 at 2:57 am
First timer here.
Excellent site you have here. Great source of inspiration
steel
August 9, 2007 at 12:06 pm
I’m also using a Plugin”hidepost.2.0″ which makes my Protected area Invisible to Unregistered users & gives them a message “You must be registered or Loggedin to view the Hidden Content”.
Blogulate
August 10, 2007 at 8:03 pm
“U comment, I follow” and Top Commentators does really well
Tupac
August 15, 2007 at 10:31 pm
I think the Top Commenters plugin is a necessecity. One must use it wisely though, and I would suggest enforcing a Terms of Service. Requires a lot of moderation though to prevent Spam.
Mike
August 21, 2007 at 6:59 pm
But, if you are not using any king of captcha, you will end up with a lot of unwanted spamming messages ay? So, what’s the catch?
A small and simple math form, that asks the commenter to add 2 by 2 for example, would be simple enough and would protect you from the spammers. Am i wrong?
Andrew
September 5, 2007 at 12:45 am
Those are useful tips, thank you.
The problem with my blog is that about 40% of all comments I get is spam. I use Blogger platform. Think I should move to Wordpress instead.
“nofollow” attribute does kill your comment count, but it reduces spam as well.
Allan Schmidt
September 15, 2007 at 8:09 pm
Very nice read and great linking.
The subscribe to comments are by far my favorite. As blog owner but more as blog surfer.
I surf quite a lot of blogs and may find one topic interesting enough to comment. I may not come back to the blog right away. I get somewhat discouraged if I cannot subscribe to the comments of the blog, since I may never find the blog again.
You may call me lazy for not bookmarking the different blogs, I comment, but I think, it should be a default service to me
Vaasu
January 18, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Hey John,
Thanks for the Valuable ideas
Hope i can get some comments in my blog soon 
Meanna Blog
February 22, 2008 at 6:37 pm
Hi John. Found myself lurking today, and thought i better comment as per your rule no. 1
Mali
February 23, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Hi John,
Some great tips here and it has kinda lifted a cloud for me. Gave me some direction with the tips you have.
Thanks
Mali
Maria Ozawa
March 19, 2008 at 9:17 pm
This is a good way to promote blog… Thank you for sharing this to us.
lax
April 6, 2008 at 9:34 am
glad to have my link in this
Temi
June 7, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Thanks for the list Contests is also a great way more comments, there’s nothing wrong in giving away something through contests, and you get good number of good comments.
McIntyre
August 11, 2008 at 1:30 pm
its amazing, a lot of people are already a part of this “u comment i follow” movement. im glad i am! Dofollow makes people feel more appreciated when the post comment on your blog. As long as you are the decider for which comment is true and have value to your blog, you are safe with GOOGLE.
McIntyre
learntoberich.com.au