In the early days of a new blog it can be frustrating to put a lot of time and energy into the writing of posts only to find that it seems as though no one is listening. While you feel you’ve said something worthy of some discussion the comments section of your post resembles a ghost town with tumbleweed blowing around.
I’ve previously written a post with 10 techniques to get more comments on your blog (one of the most commented upon posts I’ve ever written) so I won’t go over all of that again – however I wanted to share one simple technique that I’ve always found to be effective at getting readers interacting. It is obvious and very basic – but so many bloggers don’t do it.
The technique is simply to turn a post upside down and make the comments the primary focus of the post rather than what you have to say.
Here are a number of ways of doing this with some links to examples of where I’ve done it:
- Start a Debate – pick a more controversial topic or one that you think people will have strong opinions about – state the case for two sides of the arguement and let your readers go at it. Eg: Video on a DSLR – Would You Use It? and Full or Partial RSS Feeds?
- Ask for Advice – state a problem that you or a reader has and ask for help, solutions and advice. I do these regularly on DPS and call them ‘community workshops. The latest was ‘How Would You Photograph a Funeral?‘ and How to Photograph Grandma – a DPS Community Workshop.
- Ask for Tips – choose a topic that your readers might know something about and ask them for practical tips. You might then compile the tips (or the best of them) into another post. Eg: How to Photograph Kids – Leave Your Tips Here.
- Ask for Examples – give readers an invitation to submit links to examples of a topic you’re writing about. Example: What Was Your Most Popular Post in 2007.
- Ask for Experiences – ask a question about what your readers have ‘done’ or ‘experienced’. Eg: MicroStock Photography – Share Your Experience
- Give Opportunity for Self Promotion – give readers an opportunity to show themselves (or their blog, or their work) off. I did this on DPS over the weekend in a post ‘What is Your Favorite Landscape Location’ which asked readers to tell where they liked to shoot landscapes and invited them to submit links to their work.
- Run a Poll – many bloggers just put polls in their sidebars and don’t post about them. If you announce a new poll and ask readers to expand upon their vote in comments you can often generate some great discussion. It will also increase the number of responses to the poll. For example – see my recent post – ‘Have you Ever Guest Posted on Someone Else’s Blog?‘
Do feel free to add to the list in comments!
Anything that sparks emotion seems to keep people coming back to make multiple post.
I’m currently running a giveaway where the comments are the main feature. Although there are other ways to enter, most people are choosing to share ways they make someone feel loved or the way someone makes them feel loved. Obviously, this is a Valentine’s giveaway.
I’d love for your readers to come by and add their comments as well. And don’t forget to read the other comments. Most of them are great!
http://tinyurl.com/d3qyaf
It’s been a huge lesson to me that people want to share what they know.
There are hundred of this kind of article on how to get more comment from your visitor and most of it were telling the same. Anyway Darren you forgot to include, Make a blog contest – its the best tips and most of it are worked 100%
I couldn’t understand why my page views quadrupled recently, then I noticed alot of new traffic coming from my post to your landscape question! Today was a new record for number of page views on my site, and I can attribute alot of it to that single post on this site!
Great post! For a few months now I’ve been working on my first website. It’s a combination of a blog and a series of articles.
It started with my wanting to basically put together a complete set of articles introducing all the math needed to do basic game programming and computer graphics. I frequent a lot of game development forums and do a lot of game programming as a hobby, so I figured this would be a neat way to catalogue my knowledge and help people out at the same time.
The articles are only about a third of the way done. It’s tough writing something almost the length of a small book in your spare time for no compensation!
I also maintain a blog there where I just post about anything interesting and related to games, game development, math, computer graphics, or programming in general.
Unfortunately, I don’t get too many readers. Recently I’ve been really trying to expand this website into something less niche and more mainstream. Well, mainstream is maybe not the right word… I’ve just been trying to get a broader audience.
Thanks again for these tips. I’ll put them to use.
Great tips Darren… To get more comments you need to have a more personal interaction with your reader. Turning a post up side down is really a good idea
I am going to try 2 or 3 of these ideas next week – Can’t wait to see how it turns out! Thanks for the new ideas.
Great tips as always, ProBlogger. I’ve been lamenting the lack of comments on my blog as I put a lot of effort into it. But who would want to read a personal travel/life blog anyway?
impressive post. I will try it thanks.