ON COMMENTS - UPDATED 5-24-05

Alex of Alex in Wonderland is pondering a bit on blogging, traffic, and comments, and wondering what he can do to get a little more reader participation.

I already covered the traffic issue, so I'll only add that building regular readership takes time. Traffic spikes from the heavy hitters come and go, but building your readership baseline is strictly a matter of persistence.

Getting more comments has it's own set of issues. The biggest one is time. Blog readers are often busy and probably have a large list of blogs they intend to visit every day. Leaving a comment is a time commitment for the reader, and sometimes there simply aren't the minutes to spare to wait for the comment window to open and then type, type, type, proofread, correct, type, post. As a blog-host, understand that a lack of comments doesn't necessarily mean a lack of love or readership.

Knowing that your readers are probably in a hurry, consider this technical aspect: How easy is it to use your comments? Do they remember the readers' information from one day to the next? There have been many times that I've not left a comment simply because I didn't feel like typing all my info in AGAIN. And I won't even discuss the misery of having to go to a separate page to log in just to leave a :-) or LOL!

If your blogging software doesn't have user-friendly comments, you might consider using a third party comment service. Haloscan is excellent (and free). You can install that with a tiny pasted bit of code and disable the native comment service. I had to do something like this at my old Bad Money blog for technical reasons, and it worked fine. I chose to leave the Radio comments active so that people could still enjoy stuff attached to the older posts, but I could have just as easily deleted it from the post template code.

UPDATE 2-27-05: ...in the outer... shows one way to display Blogger comments after installing Haloscan.

UPDATE 3-20-05: QUICK AND PAINLESS GUIDE TO ADDING HALOSCAN COMMENTS WHILE KEEPING YOUR OLD BLOGGER COMMENTS VISIBLE

For your readers, the great thing about Haloscan comments is that, once they sign in on ANY blog with Haloscan comments, they will be remembered on every other blog that uses Haloscan. Very convenient.

Once your comments work well, how do you get people to use them? Outside of being very popular or very controversial, it's hard to say, but I have a few notions for encouraging them.

End your post with a question: People leave comments when what you've written sparks an idea in their heads. Asking a question makes the reader answer it, and probably makes them think up a "why" to justify that answer. Since it's skull-floating anyway, there's a good chance it'll get typed up. See this post as an example.

ASK for comments to your post: A more direct version of the above suggestion. See this post for an example. Sometimes shyer readers don't realize that bloggers LOVE comments, and they're hesitant to say anything, even though they have an urge. Inviting them in so many words can tip the balance for an indecisive reader.

Keep your posts to a single subject: Although it's easy to get caught up in your own stream of consciousness and range over a variety of topics, it's often only a single point you make that a reader will want to respond to. If you go off on other tangents, the reader may feel like his comment isn't really "on-topic" and may decide not to leave it. This is not to say that long, rambling posts aren't perfectly ok - they most certainly are - it's just that they're not as comment-encouraging.

Then there's the more indirect approach. These techniques might not yield immediate results, but they help develop a more talkative readership.

Comment on reader's comments: When people leave comments, reward them with a little attention by leaving a comment of your own that responds to what they said. Positive feedback is always appreciated.

Comment on other people's blogs: Reciprocation is the norm in the blogosphere. If you leave comments for other people, you'll get them in return.

Blog about your reader's comments: One of the biggest thrills for a reader is to see that something they said inspired its very own post. It's VERY flattering. I don't suggest that you try to FORCE an entry if you're not truly inspired, but if a comment is particularly stimulating, why not put it on stage with a spotlight?

Finally, there's one more thing you can do, but use it with caution:

Whine about how you never get comments: If you're really sick of seeing "comments(0)", put up a pouty, tantrum-filled post about how hurt your feelings are. The risk here is that these posts often get linked elsewhere, and you may get bombarded with all kinds of weird stuff by quirky-humored bloggers.

I should end here, but I suppose that, for the sake of completeness, I should mention that you can always go the melodramatic route and threaten to quit blogging, just to get people to beg you not to go. Not that anyone actually does that sort of thing.

UPDATE 5-24-05: [If you've found this post useful enough to blog about, send a trackback or e-mail the permalink to me at harvolson-at-gmail.com and I'll add you to my Bad Example Groupies blogroll. See this post for details]