How to Get More Comments on Your Blog

An important part of the blogosphere is the interaction that takes place between bloggers and their readers and between bloggers and other bloggers. Bloggers very often discuss topics written about by other bloggers, adding depth to the overall conversation. Comments are an integral part of the blog communication web. A successful blog will, with rare exception, have many comments on any given post. This demonstrates the blog's value as people are interested enough in what the blogger has written to add their thoughts to the conversation. But, how do you get more comments on your blog? There are several key ways to encourage comments on your blog:

Write good content. Good content is the holy grail of blogging. Good content is what gets readers to your blog in the first place, and good content is what keeps readers coming back. Without something interesting to say and the ability to say it effectively, your blog will never elicit a reader to respond by commenting.

Comment on other blogs. Commenting on related blogs does several things for you. It provides a way for readers of that blog to click back to your own blog. It puts you on that blogger's radar. It helps to build your overall reader base. In addition, commenting on someone else's blog will often spur them to come to your blog and comment, as well. The blogosphere is all about reciprocal relationships, and this is as true for comments as it is for blogrolls. Yaro Starak of Entrepreneur's Journey (http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com) used to post at least 10 comments to related blogs every night, and his blog has had a steady stream of traffic and comments for years.

Keep the conversation going. Don't just let the comments sit in your blog; respond to them. Tell your readers that you value their thoughts. Engage your readers by discussing their favorite topic: themselves. A particular blog post may sit unread, sometimes for weeks, when suddenly an interesting discussion will spring up in the comments section and bring all sorts of traffic to your blog.

Offer cash and prizes. Some blogs, such as The Pioneer Woman (http://www.thepioneerwoman.co m), run regular contests that reward a random commenter with a prize of some sort. Other contests might encourage commenters to help you think of a name for your pet, offer their best sales advice, or tell their most embarrassing story. Offering a reward is almost guaranteed to increase your comments.

Write so as to elicit a response. You can do like Darren Rowse of ProBlogger (http://www.problogger.net) and end nearly every post with a question like "so, why do YOU think social networking is so popular?" You can include a survey in your post and encourage survey takers to leave a comment. You can write something that is controversial or even inflammatory, knowing that someone will just HAVE to give you their opinion. While these are not the only ways to get more comments on your blog, they have been proven to be effective time after time.