Blog Authors - How To Get More Comments Per Visitor

The joy of a blog is engaging with readers. For a small business, it can be a vital sales and marketing tool.

But are you getting enough engagement? Do visitors realise they can comment? Did you realise that when you first visited a blog? Let me explain.

You go to a game. Soccer, Football, Baseball, whatever.

You're part of a crowd of 50,000 people who love watching that sport.

You are all one family. You know the teams. The rules. The players. Everyone in that same crowd talks the same language as you.

Now go back in time, say 100 years. The sport was barely established. Everyone kind of knew the rules, but they hadn't really been written. The first amateur or professional teams in the sport drew crowds of a few hundred.

Outside of that few people had heard of the sport. Never mind understood the rules or the name of the team. They certainly didn't know the language.

Blogs: To Get More Crowd Participation, First, You Have To Educate

This graph is my guesstimate at the stage we're at. Somewhere between early adopters and early majority.

A bit like the early stages of most modern sports, people are becoming aware blogs exist, but few have seen a game so to speak.

You're Missing Out On A Huge Audience

In my last post, I suggested that a high percentage of your visitors may not even know they're looking at a blog. As for commenting, they're used to web-sites being one-way traffic.

You will notice I have drawn a line on that graph. I suggest that a percentage of the total audience are bloggers. And because they understand the medium, they are far more likely to participate and comment.

Now because we are arguably still in the early adoption phases, a large percentage of blog visitors aren't yet attuned to comment.

Why not get an early slice of non-blogging market and engage with them through your comments section?

Blogger and Wordpress - Creating An Autosignature

In my last post, I advocated capturing that interaction through the creation of an autosignature to each blog post.

Include these 3 elements:

1) A short statement, briefly defining blogs and their interactive nature

2) Guidance, relevant to the layout of your own blog, about where to find the comment link and what it looks like

3) An explanation of what to complete to have their comment accepted - remember, entering a URL is not essential, and many non-bloggers will not have one and potentially be put off commenting if they don't understand

My suggestion is:

This is a blog. A website that thrives on interaction from every visitor including you. Your comments are welcome.

Depending upon how you arrived at this site, you will see either 'Posted by Ian Denny 23:00' followed by a 'Comment' link you can click. Or you will see comments already made and/or a link you can click with the text 'Post a comment'.

To add your comment, I recommend you choose the "Name/URL" option. You can then use your own name, an alias or a nickname. If you have your own web-site, you can add this too if you like so people seeing your comment can click to visit it - enter your address in the URL box. Or leave it blank.

Blogger

To achieve this in blogger, firstly sign-in. Then choose "Customise".

Click on setting and formatting. The scroll down to the last option on the page which looks like this:
Enter your own autosignature and save.

Now, whenever you create a new blog post, this text will automatically appear and increase your chances of capturing comments.

Wordpress

This is an excellent step-by-step guide for a DIY Wordpress signature:

Making A Wordpress Post Template

Help Blogs Reach That Tipping Point

Add your own autosignature. Educate non-blogging visitors. More importantly, improve your own experience by receiving more interaction from the non-blogging audience.

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This is a blog. A website that thrives on interaction from every visitor including you. Your comments are welcome.

Depending upon how you arrived at this site, you will see either 'Posted by Ian Denny 23:00' followed by a 'Comment' link you can click. Or you will see comments already made and/or a link you can click with the text 'Post a comment'.

To add your comment, I recommend you choose the "Name/URL" option. You can then use your own name, an alias or a nickname. If you have your own web-site, you can add this too if you like so people seeing your comment can click to visit it - enter your address in the URL box. Or leave it blank.