5 Surefire Ways to Get Blog Comments Flowing to Your Content

Source : 5 Surefire Ways to Get Blog Comments Flowing to Your Content
Published On : May 03, 2019 at 08:30AM
By : Ankit Singla

Having a steady flow of comments on your posts is a sign of a healthy blog.

Not only will it boost your authority, blog commenters can also provide valuable feedback on how to improve your site.

To date, my blog has amassed thousands of comments from you guys — thousands more are yet to be approved.

If you’re wondering how to get more comments on your blog, then you’ve come to the right place.

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In this post, I’ll show you how to get comments on your blog and have more people talking about your brand.

But first, allow me to share the importance of an active community of commenters on your blog.

Why are Blog Comments Important?

A lot of bloggers like to get their audience involved with their site’s growth.

I, for one, often ask questions or invite readers to leave their thoughts in the form of comments.

But aside from their ability to generate useful insights from the community, blog comments also have other long-term benefits.

• Improved Organic Traffic – A study published by Neil Patel shows that keywords in the comments section can potentially pull in organic search traffic. They’re definitely not as potent as keywords placed in other content elements, but don’t forget that authentic comments are free.
• Foster an Active Community – Successful blogging is more than just publishing online content. It’s also about establishing a driven community that help spread brand awareness and push your blog forward.
• Build Your Brand’s Credibility – As I’ve mentioned before, having a ton of comments on your blog will elevate your authority in your niche. This will boost the confidence of visitors on your products, services, and value propositions in general.
• Generate Evergreen Value – Keeping the conversation going long after the post is published can maintain the page’s relevance in the long run. That is, of course, you continue to engage comments by answering questions and exchanging ideas with readers.
• Decide Your Next Post – In some scenarios, reader input can also be refined into topic ideas you can cover in future posts. The more comments your content gets, the more likely it is to find suggestions that can be converted into topics.

I think I’ve mentioned enough points to prove the significance of comments in blogs.

Now, you’re ready to take the steps that will invite more readers to leave comments on your posts.

Here goes…

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1. Write with a Conversational Writing Tone

The number one rule to maximizing reader engagement is to write top-notch content, but that would be too obvious.

What you need is to make slight adjustments in the overall tone of your writing.

Let me explain.

By now, you should know that different bloggers have different writing styles. Some like to keep it professional and avoid colloquial speech, whereas bloggers like me write with a friendlier tone.

You can observe this in the way I write my intros.

With a conversational tone, you’re prepping your audience not just to become readers, but as participants in two-way communication.

I’m not saying you should do a complete overhaul of your writing style. If you’re used to writing with a formal language, there’s nothing wrong with sticking to your comfort zone.

However, you may want to consider sprinkling your content with sentences directed towards your readers.

A great example would be a simple, thought-provoking question like:

Such questions will make readers feel like they’re actually part of the conversation.

A few more tips to remember…

• To get used to writing in second person, remember the pronouns “you,” “your,” and “yours.”
• Read your sentences out loud to check if it sounds natural to English speakers.
• If you’re dead set on adopting a more conversational writing style, start with contractions like “don’t” instead of “do not.”

2. Use CTAs in Your Conclusion

Speaking of addressing your readers, the “conclusion” section of your post is the perfect place to straight-up request for comments.

I’ve tried several strategies over the years I’ve been blogging. Eventually, I realized that I only needed to remember one thing: KISS.

Keep It Simple, Stupid.

You don’t always have to come up with something clever each time you write a conclusion. In numerous cases, I just openly ask readers to leave a comment.

Will a simple CTA be enough to garner comments from readers? Sure.

But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t explore other ways to request for comments.

Asking for a follow-up on their results

If I’m feeling a bit creative, I use a call-to-action that aligns with the reader’s goal.

For example, in my post on how to do guest blogging, I encouraged readers to post about their results.

Take note that I can be a lot more specific with my CTA. I could ask them to tell which particular strategy helped them find their first guest blogging prospect.

Here’s one more example for the road from my post on how to check website traffic.

Asking a final question

Another way to attract blog commenters is to ask one final question by the end of your post.

It should be something that they can answer using the information you provided.

For example, in my post about the best keyword research tools, I plainly asked readers about the tool they’d choose.

If you’re a blogger who deeply cares about the value your readers receive, this should be really easy to do. After all, you should already know what readers will accomplish with your article before you even write it.

Invite them to share their opinions

This third technique is just a slightly-altered version of candidly asking for comments on your blog.

Rather than writing something like “leave a comment below,” all you have to do is to be more specific.

In my tutorial about writing list posts, I added a one-liner that helped me get dozens of comments.

The best thing about this approach is that it can be woven into any conclusion. You don’t need to surround it with supporting sentences — just add after your conclusion and you’re good.

3. Try Writing Listicles

There’s actually one more CTA that can convince readers to leave comments, but it requires a specific type of content.

You already know what they are — listicles.

Here’s the thing: the majority of listicles out there, even the so-called “ultimate” lists, can still be expanded. As a result, publishing them on your blog is an opportunity to get readers involved and ask them for suggestions.

I used this tactic in my post about the best Google Chrome extensions for bloggers. Take a look at the simple CTA I slid into the conclusion:

Another benefit of listicles is the fact that it just makes content research and development a whole lot easier.

Also, bear in mind that not all listicles need a title with “Top X Tools” or “X Best Strategies.”

If you think about it, this post still contains a list of tips. Therefore, it can still be expanded in the future — with your help, of course.

4. Make Blog Commenting a Breeze

Let’s step away from content writing tips for a moment.

If you want your readers to leave comments, you must first make the experience intuitive.

For most of us bloggers, a key stepping stone is to learn how to allow comments on WordPress blog sites.

The good news is, comments are enabled by default. But if you hired someone who could’ve switched off comments during the early development phase, you must enable it manually.

To do this, log in to your WordPress dashboard and click on ‘Settings.’ From the sub-menu, click ‘Discussion.’

On the “Default article settings” row, enable ‘Allow people to post comments on new articles.’ That should do it!

While you’re there, don’t hesitate to tweak the rest of the settings to your liking.

For example, the ‘Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article’ alerts sites you’ve mentioned and linked to. This can be beneficial for relationship building.

The ‘Allow link notifications from other blogs’ settings, on the other hand, notifies you whenever you’re mentioned in other sites. You may enable this setting in

However, since spammers use trackbacks and pingbacks, plenty of bloggers disable link notifications from other sites. At the very least, you should enable ‘Attempt to notify any blogs linked to from the article’ since you have pretty much nothing to lose.

Managing how your site handles comments

You can also configure the way your site handles new comments on the “Other comment settings” section.

As the first line of defense against spammers, consider enabling ‘Comment author must fill out name and email.’

For the rest of the settings, below is a list of guidelines to help you determine how to use them:

• Users must be registered and logged in to comment — Enabling this option adds a sense of exclusivity to your subscription list, which can accelerate lead generation. But for new blogs, it only adds unnecessary friction to the commenting experience.
• Automatically close comments on articles older than X days — I’d stay away from this setting since it takes away the potential evergreen value of your content. As the name implies, it disables comments on posts once they reach a certain age.
• Show comments cookies opt-in checkbox, allowing comment author cookies to be set — For GDPR or General Data Protection Regulation compliance, enable this setting to notify commenters that their information will be recorded. This will also allow them to leave comments in other posts without entering their information each time.
• Enable threaded (nested) comments — Enabling this option makes more intensive discussions on your blog more usable. If disabled, responses will be added as a new comment rather than being organized in a unified thread.
• Break comments into pages with X top level comments per page — I mentioned this feature in my post on how to reduce blog page load time. Enable this to set the maximum number of comments that can be simultaneously shown on your blog.

You should also see a bunch of other options on the “Discussion Settings” page. Stuff like getting notifications via email and such can be useful if you want to actively engage comments.

For now, let’s look at other ways to make the commenting experience great.

Integrating a third-party comment system

Although content management systems like WordPress already have a built-in comment system, some bloggers still resort to third-party apps.

Disqus, for one, is a popular comment system that a large number of sites use nowadays. It spices up the user experience with real-time updates and rich media like GIFs and image uploads.

Here’s a look at Disqus in action:

To use Disqus on your blog, you must create an account and choose ‘I want to install Disqus on my site.’

The next steps involve specifying your website’s name and category.

Next, you will be asked to choose either a free or paid subscription. You’ll also be required to specify the platform your site is built on.

As you may have expected, the succeeding steps depend on your site’s platform. Just follow the on-screen instructions or watch the tutorial video to complete the installation.

If your blog is built with WordPress, the installation of Disqus includes the use of a plugin.

That reminds me…

For WordPress-powered blogs, I recommend you check out WP Facebook Comments.

It’s a neat, lightweight plugin that will allow your readers to leave comments using their Facebook accounts.

The integration with Facebook also comes with a few perks.

For instance, blog commenters can choose to share their comments on their profiles — thus, contributing to your social presence. The plugin also natively supports multiple languages and photo uploads, just like the comment system on Facebook itself.

5. Make the Comments Section More Visible

Let’s say your blog checks all the boxes when it comes to content quality and comment system usefulness.

You finally get readers intrigued enough to leave a comment — but there’s one problem:

Your blog’s comment section is buried at the very bottom of the page.

This is especially problematic for bloggers like me who write lengthy posts. Fortunately, there’s a quick workaround for this issue.

If you’re using WordPress, I’ll show you a nifty little trick that will make your comments section more accessible.

Ready? Here it is:

Create a hyperlink to “#commentform.”

Easy, right?

Suppose you want to create a link to your comments section using the anchor text “Click here.”

On WordPress, just type in the words, highlight it, and click the ‘Insert/edit link’ button.

On the pop-up URL field, simply enter “#commentform” and click ‘Apply.’ That’s it — you now have a functioning link that brings users directly to the comments!

In addition to this trick, there are a few other things you can do to improve the visibility of the comments section:

• Eliminate visual clutter like ads and complicated menus.
• Pick a clean-looking, readable font.
• Use a minimalistic theme for your blog like GeneratePress.
• Always be a polite, respectful, and helpful human being. J

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Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this brief but valuable guide on how to get blog comments.

You may be expecting a witty conclusion with a CTA encouraging you to leave a comment below…

Well, you’re absolutely right!

What can I say? My readers, students, and social media followers are the lifeblood of this blog.

Looking forward to hearing from you in the comments below. Over and out!

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