How do you get more comments on your blog?
When you first start out blogging it seems no-one is reading your blog. The stats are low, the income zero and the comments…. what comments??? Then one day – your first comment! You suddenly feel as if the whole world is beating a path to your door.
After a few months the enthusiasm is starting to wane a little. The stats are steadily climbing; you might have 10 visitors a day instead of five! The income, well you made 91 cents for the month. At that rate it will take 91 millenia to become a millionaire, give or take a few hundred years.
How do you get comments? Darren Rowse on ProBlogger suggests that less than 1% of all readers will ever comment. How to get more comments? Darren suggests 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog. All are well worth following but I’d add another strategy.
11. Write Good Content: if readers perceive a need to read your blog or they have a deep interest in your topics they will return. Increased traffic should generate more comments and more return visits. Interesting content will develop a community of readers who will become involved. When they start getting involved it can take on a life of its own. Interesting content is intellectually stimulating and the readers will want to be involved. And they will start telling others (through links and posts quoting you). It’s just like word of mouth about the latest great movie or book – everyone checks it out to see what all the hype is about.
Links:
Just a Thought
“Smile first thing in the morning. Get it over with.” W.C. Fields.
Far too many people take life too seriously. Why – some of them look as if they are suffering permanently from constipation, just to look at their faces.
Smile – and the world smiles with you as the saying goes. In this world of gloom and doom and rush and hurry, take time not only to smell the roses (they are just starting to bloom again in Australia) but light up the day of someone else and smile.
Here are some other quotes about smiling:
“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.” Phyllis Diller.
“Life is short, but a smile takes barely a second.” Cuban proverb.
“Smile; it’s the second best thing you can do with your lips.” Unknown source.
Ways to Improve Your Writing and Blogging
Writers and bloggers should be striving always to improve their writing skills. These skills can develop in a number of ways. I have read a number of books on writing, attended workshops, seminars and conferences and read numerous magazine and online articles about improving one’s writing skills.
Eventually the learning process must give way to putting it all into practice. The learning should never cease; no-one is a perfect writer and we can all still develop ways of improving. But the application of all that learning is the vital factor here. Practice, practice, practice. Keep writing, keep striving to improve, keep writing, edit your work, be critical of your own work and read it aloud.
All these methods – and more – are employed by successful writers and bloggers. Darren Rowse has a list of 10 Ways to Improve Your Blogging through Practice on his ProBlogger site.
Related articles:
- Writing hints – a series of hints on improving your writing.
- Great Writing Ideas – links to some great blogs on helping you to improve your writing and blogging skills.
- The Importance of Proofreading – catch those pesky little errors in your writing.
- How to Improve Your Blog – links to good articles on this topic.
31 Tips for Freelance Writers
Anne Wayman on her blog about writing called The Golden Pencil has a list of articles about tips for freelance writers. There are some very useful hints and tips in this list and they are well worth reading.
Links:
- “31 Tips for Freelance Writers.” – this is the index of the articles.
- The Golden Pencil – the Freelance Writer’s Resource.
Making connections
Writing can be a rather lonely pursuit most of the time. The writer needs to fully concentrate on the task at hand and spend many hours alone getting words down on paper (or at least on the hard-drive). Seminars and conferences are fine for mixing with other writers, publishers and agents. If a writer becomes a conference junkie, or tries to attend every seminar, workshop or festival there is often little time left for the real work of being a writer.
The real work of being a writer – is writing. There is no easy way out. To write a 100,000 word novel, the writer has to write down or type every word. There is no easy path to success. It is a hard slog, and can be very lonely.
Blogging can be different
Writing a blog can be a quite different. One of the delights I have discovered with blogging is the sense of community that develops. On my three blogs I have a very real sense of a community of readers developing as the weeks go by. More and more people are coming to visit, to revisit, to comment and even start up conversations with me via email.
Making Connections
It is the connections we make with one another via our blogs that fascinate and excite me. In recent days I have have the delight of two significant blogs making a link with this blog, and writing some flattering comments about my blog on their blogs.
My special thanks to Rick and Anne. (Sorry – the link to Rick’s site no longer works.)
Related links:
- The Golden Pencil – Anne Wayman – the Freelance Writer’s Resource.
Updated November 2013.