Why Is My Blog Not Getting Comments?

Jul 17th, 2007 by Leonid Shalimov | Scroll down for comments

This is a common question I see while browsing some of my regular forums. What’s the deal with comments, my blog is up, the content is good, but I’m getting zilch!? It’s disheartening to pour so much work into something and then get no response.

Well good news, it may not be your fault that no-one is commenting on your blog. A lot of the times, its the content that drives whether or not comments are made. If your blog is about teaching or something or just showing facts or what-not, people will be less inclined to comment. If your blog is something influential, controversial and personal (asking reader’s or enticing responses), you will more likely get comments. Hopefully that makes sense.

The bad news, it could also be your fault that people aren’t leaving comments. Let’s go through some mistakes bloggers make to see what should be fixed.

Maybe it’s better to not have comments at all in the beginning.

A practice I suggest for newer blogs who are struggling getting comments is to simply edit your template to not show how many comments are posted for each post. This does not mean disabling comments, leave them on, just edit out the part where it shows how many comments are posted.

This way, users can still comment, but it won’t show how many comments there are necessarily. You can do this until you begin to get a steady stream of comments and then go back to showing comments. No one wants to see a blog with 0 comments on each post, its kind of a sad thing :(.

Comment on other blogs, you’ll get comments back.

This is an almost full proof way of getting comments. Network yourself, reach out to the community. I say it time and time again, probably because it works. It’s not guaranteed that other people will comment back, but for the most part, people are helpful. It also gives it a more personal feel and allows for interaction between webmasters.

Your comment system is slow, complicated, and too much work for the average internet user.

God have I seen this about twenty times now. Probably one of the most frustrating features on some blogs are for users having to sign up to comment. Stay away from this tactic. You want your readers to be able to fill in at most 3-4 boxes and be able to post their feelings.

Make sure your comment system is designed well, smoothly and that it works. Test it yourself to see if you would leave a comment.

Interact with your readers, don’t be afraid to answer comments.

When I see authors replying to comments, it shows a personal feel, that the author really cares. It makes me want to comment. Interact with your readers. Don’t be shy!

Incentive.

One simple word. Want comments? Give reader’s some incentive. I’ve recently started a sidebar promoting the people who commented the most by giving them a linkback. This way, more people would want to comment to get their site up on that list!

Hope that helps! If you have any additional suggestions, feel free to comment ;). Also, if you enjoyed this post, please Subscribe to our RSS feed.

Leonid Shalimov posted this article under Blog Improvement on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 10:45 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your own site. View Technorati Linkbacks.