This morning I was chatting to a group of b5media bloggers in our weekly internal chat about a strategy that I occasionally use to get more comments on particular posts.
This tip will only work on blogs that have had people leave comments before – but it doesn’t need a lot of previous comments.
The strategy is simple
1. If you have a post that you particularly want to get comments on – simply look at the last 10 or so comments on your blog and shoot an email to the people who left them.
2. In the email – thank them for their recent comment and invite them to check out the post that you’ve just written and to comment upon it.
I wouldn’t use this strategy too regularly – but on an occasional basis it can be great at kicking off a conversation as it targets those who are more likely to comment – because they’ve got a record of doing so.
An Example
This is actually a strategy that I used on this post at DPS.
As you’ll see in that post – it was a post that leant itself to comments in that it was asking readers to answer a question (this will definitely help). The reason that I used this strategy on this particular post was that it was the first of a new type of post that I was testing on the blog (community workshops).
The result?
I emailed 10 recent comment leavers from the blog and 7 of them left a comment (7 of the first 10). I believe that this created a sense of ‘action’ on the post and drew others into commenting also.
The other benefit of it is that it actually led to a few good email interactions with readers who actually appreciated me dropping them an email to thank them for their comments and who hopefully are now a little more loyal to the blog than they were previously.
A Word of Warning
As mentioned above – this isn’t something that you’ll probably want to do too regularly. You’ll also probably want to personalize your emails as much as possible (I sent each one separately, use individuals names, commented upon their comments and even linked to their previous comment) so that it doesn’t come across as a spammy group email.
Want more tips on getting comments? Check out these 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog (one of the most commented upon posts on ProBlogger).
