No More “No Replies”
I’ll admit, I have a problem.
It’s not drugs, it’s not alcohol (maybe it is, but ahem, back to the article) – it’s comments. Comments, community response – whatever you want to call it – seems to be on the low here no matter what I do.
Is it the content? Is it the fact that we struggle to get that “first comment” that can so many times lead to many more comments? I sit here dumbfounded by the entire commenting process, a process that apparently, not many of you (the readers), participate in around here.
So I sat down to write this article on ways to bring comments to your blog, when I realized I myself needed to find a solution to this. So I decide, enough’s enough – and I started playing music in Winamp and put the article on draft.
What’s the big deal anyways?
As an author, you always want to hear from the audience and get their response to what you’re saying. Did it make any sense to them at all? Was the piece helpful, or just a waste of five minutes of reading? Comments help authors determine what they’re doing wrong, how they can correct things, and how they can improve their writing style to better the connection to their audience.
Like artists (musicians) without a crowd listening to what the artist is producing, there would be little reason to be playing. Imagine drumming your heart out on stage, only to see a motionless audience watching you, without even the slightest body motion. Did you skip a beat? Do you just overall suck? What could possibly be wrong?
The truth is, response is almost as critical the actual piece itself. An blog author without comments is like a dog without a bone – pissed off and laying down in the corner.
Writing Style Matters
Every person is different, and everyone does things a little differently. One thing that seems to determine comments is the authors individual writing style. How they convey themselves on what they’re talking about in each article has a lot of effect on the readers. If the author seems confused what they’re telling the reader to do, the reader will immediately dismiss the article and move on.
To convey readers you have to keep them enticed. The easiest way to do this is to know your audience inside and out, and connect with them on a personal level. I’m not saying if your audience is male dominated that you should use lingerie photos in the middle of posts to keep visitors interested, (although it would probably work), but use the appropriate grammar and spelling based on what most of your readers will understand. For example, if I say XHTML, 85% of our visitors know what it is. But if you were running a sports related website and you decided to drop in “I’m having some difficulties getting the XHTML to validate” to a news post, 90% of your visitors will be saying “What the [explicit] are they talking about!” Put yourself on the same level as your visitors, and talk to them like they’re your friends.
Leave in some openness
Some people tend to forget how open-endedness can really help a posts response. Add in questions that get visitors to think and form logical responses. If you’re dealing with a controversial topic or one that has multiple solutions, once some visitors start voicing their opinions, others will get involved with their own responses. This can lead to a heavy build up of comments, and an ongoing discussion between site visitors, which is always a good thing.
Join In
No matter how many comments an article may have, either a lot or a little, make sure you’re getting involved in the response as well. A lot of times people will ask me questions about “how to do this” or “is this possible” in relation to my multi-article Wordpress customization guides. I try to help as much as I can, and point them in the right direction when I can’t give full blown out instructions. Just like you like to hear from visitors, visitors like to hear from authors so they know their comments aren’t falling on deaf ears. This also helps spark some of that back and forth commenting I talked about above.
You Comment Mine, I’ll Comment Yours
I heard that commenting on others peoples blogs will also help you turn in the comments yourself. I haven’t had much success with this, as I’ve commented on many other peoples blogs but have not received the same response back. It usually take a link to show up in Mint to here something from a fellow site. If you’re going to go with the “1-for-1 exchange”, make sure the comment you left on another site was deeply formulated and well thought out, as it will increase the chances of that author returning the favor to your own articles. Posting a simple “Nice post” generally doesn’t yield many results.
Design Matters
Site design also plays a big part in harvesting comments. If a design is poorly put together, you can expect visitors to not waste much time trying to figure out how or where to go to leave a comment. Make it easier for them by inserting skip to comment links at the top of articles (now added here), and dedicating a clear place for responses either at the top, bottom, or sides of posts. Don’t make readers leave the page unless they really have to (IE, discussing in a forum thread). Make sure if you were a visitor to your site, you would understand how commenting works, because if it’s hard for you to grasp the concept, imagine the difficulty it could cause first time visitors.
Articles + Response = Happy You
In the end if you’re successful with getting visitors to respond to your posts, you’ll feel much better about hitting that publish button, and you’ll probably find yourself doing it a lot more. Make a personal connection with your visitors, and give them something to talk about. Hopefully I’ll see myself having to hear from you in response to this article, otherwise I might have to head back into a corner with a dog somewhere. We’ll see -
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OK I’ll be the first then
I totally agree that getting some response adds a lot and is very important. I can imagine how it feels when you get some traffic but little comments. You start wondering, is it not interesting enough?
Well don’t worry I’m sure that’s not the case. I follow devlounge and read most articles and find them interesting as well. But for me, when I don’t feel like I have something useful to add to a discussion I most often do not place a comment.
Sorry, I’ll better my life
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One more thing: I found something which might help to get more ‘in touch’ with your readers: let us know who you are. Where is the author’s name? Maybe even a photo? I didn’t see a name around the article. So I checked the about page – also no names or photo’s. So I check back at the article: one tiny reference to “aj”. Who’s that?
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He, this is a funny entry. I have noticed many blogs, especially blogs with great content, be commentless.
Why? Is it because we all hide in our feed reader? Is it the content which isn’t provocative enough or just because your content is smarter than your reader base?
I am a feed hider, I only rarely comment on blogs, unless I really think I can add something, or the entry just invited me to comment like this one.
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Heh, I’m glad I’m already turning out comments fairly quickly with this entry. Glad you guys liked the post
@Matthijs – I know, every weekend I say I’m going to get the new authors page in order but I end up working on something else. It’s the last page that needs updating and I haven’t found a chance to get it done. I’ll make sure I get at it this week.
@Franky – I never really thought about that, I forgot about feeds really giving people a need not to check back because they read the articles without ever visiting the site. Either way, thanks for the comment
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I have been following Devlounge for a few months now and have actually not commented on one article until now. I too get your feed however I click the link and read my feed articles on the actual sites they were posted on. Devlounge definitely brings some quality articles to the online web developing community and mostly for me I just don’t really have time to comment after I read most articles. I too don’t normally have anything to add to the discussion so that’s the biggest reason for me not commenting on the articles.
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Aha, the discussion so far has made one thing clear: if people don’t have anything to add they will not comment. The solution? Make sure they have. Just make some mistakes, leave some important aspects out of your story or say something very stupid or controversial
Ok, maybe that’s a bit over the top. But I do think there are certain ‘tactics’ you can use to attract more interaction. Like taking a bit more controversial standpoint. Or ending an article with some questions instead of definitive statements. Or pointing your attention directly to your readers, as you did in this article.
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The point about reading site content via an RSS feed is an interesting one. For people using feed aggregators the number of articles coming through can very quickly mount up — and they might ALL be full of really good content, but if you’ve got a big list of items to read then you may not have the time to formulate comments on many (if any).
Does this mean RSS feeds might be killing article feedback? I don’t think so, but it does mean less people might actually visit the site (which I know I’m guilty of often). And if you don’t have the comment form sitting there right in front of you, plus you have a large list of other posts to read… it must have some impact, don’t you think?
But then again, here I am, posting a comment, after coming via my RSS aggregator….
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I’m not sure what the real statistics is on this, but I’m sure the percentage is pretty low. I wouldn’t doubt it if it’s around 5 to 10 percent of your readers that will comment. So out of 100 people reading your article maybe only 10 will comment. I wouldn’t doubt it if the average is even lower than that.
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Well it’s good to know that you guys are reading and enjoying most of our articles, just various factors contribute to a low comment output.
Maybe I’m just jealous of people like Paul getting at least a few comments on every post, but whatever, I can live with it, as long as I know that you guys are enjoying what we’re putting out
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I think it shows that you are covering a topic well if you get few/no comments.
A way I’ve found to increase comments is to end with a question. “What’s your opinion?” or “Can CSS survive?” This often does the trick.
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Interesting post this..I found it purely by accident, and I for one am one of those lurkers who reads a lot..but says Jack Snot!!
Here are just some of the things that might get me to comment when I don’t usually..
The Author, who generally I know nothing about..has hit a topic or problem that’s been whirring in the back of my mind for a while, but that I’ve been too lazy to try and solve, or even discuss – (hint: do research on people’s problems, and try and solve them or at least discuss them)
I noticed that some people I ‘do’ know are getting actively involved in the comment process, supplying their own thoughts and solutions…mmmm! (hint: actively seek out people who know more about the subject than I do, and perhaps suggest using any nice or devious methods I can think of, that they put me straight, correct me, make me look a fool..or perhaps just feel sorry for me, and want to make me a new friend..BLESS!)
The Author makes a blatently outlandish statement, that I feel is so controversial that I just have to comment..the cad, how dare he/she/it..I’m not having that, who the hell do they think they are..I’m going to give you a piece of my….
gotta go..got more blogs to READ..but I’ll be back, if only to see if anybody replied to this..I’m vain like that!
aaahhh! vanity…………
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Just accidentally coming back, as comment feeds really would kill my feed reader (sorry have 500+ feeds)
I think today the number of subscribers plays a big role when analyzing if your site is popular or not.
You mentioned Paul. Compare the amount of comments he has to the number of subscribers.
Or even Veerle, who most of time has many comments.
And if I check fe. the 9rules members I follow, although great content not many have a high number of comments.
Tracking comments has become even harder : many blog’s email notifications are listed as spam in gmail, co/co.mment would kill many feed readers (mine surely).
But nevertheless I miss the back and forth one used to have in forums. My reading habits have changed since blogs. I contribute less.
Now, would there be a way to integrate comment forms remotely in a feed reader? I surely would participate more.
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Yeah, I wish they would. I should pass that along to the guys at Feedburner
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I’ld rather send it to the guys at bloglines/newsgator as they need to create an external XML feature for this.
Feedburner, yes they could maybe consider it, but it doesn’t belong to the rss-specifications and can only work if the aggregators can handle the comment form.
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Thanks for the suggestion. Will do
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Great article! I’ve had some problems with this on my own site. I tried the “you comment, we comment” thing – still am, as a matter of fact – and the quality of the comments appalls me, to the point where I want to write about them, but I know I’ll risk losing a lot of my commenters if I phrase it a certain way.
I have to agree with Bryn though; I tend to be extremely controversial with my topics, because I can write more on them. But it’s interesting. My political, commentary, and art categories garner more GOOD comments than my writing, general, music, and technology category. I’m really not sure how to target these guys at all!
@Andrew: Oooh, yes, the pivotal question at the end of the post trick. I’m only afraid my meager and idle audience would pass that by as well, seeing as it takes a mammoth effort to get them to try to make good comments on ANYTHING, let alone posts where they have to be prompted to answer.
I think the hardest thing for most bloggers (myself included) is limiting yourself to one topic. When you start to branch off, people get confused. “You were talking about cats yesterday – and now you’re talking about the migration of the giant squid? WHAT A LOSER.” It doesn’t seem right though, to have to stay within the frame of one topic or within a certain intelligence. Were this World of Warcraft (maybe I should write about this for once), I would issue out a “WTB BETTER COMMENTERS” and sit back and relax.
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My problem is not a lack of comments, it’s a lack of feedback. That probably sounds odd and some of are thinking “wtf – they’re the same thing!” but I don’t think they are. Anyone can comment on any article with “great aticle, thanks” but it’s meaningful or intelligent feedback that I find is rare.
Perhaps it’s because my weblog is such a huge mixed bag of content and the specialist audiences that would provide the ideal replies are put off by stuff that doesn’t affect them. Worth thinking about, I think.
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First, great article and great response from the readers. Had there been no comments (ironically), this articles would not have been as interesting to read.
I agree with what has been said and would like to add that the aimed-for audience determines the quality of the comments. Here, you have a serious group of individuals looking to contribute their knowledge. On other sites, the comments will be more along the lines of ‘Nice!’, ‘Good read’, ‘This is bull****!’ And often times, there are more comments of the second nature than the first.
The question then becomes: is it better to have one contributive response, or 10 ‘Nice Post!’s?
Finally, as in Leave In Some Openness, open-ended articles will receive most comments. But aren’t they more like forum entries, where the poster seeks response and discussion? Inevitably, we have to clearly identify what an article is: is it a statement, or a topic of conversation?