What is everyone's strategy for blog comment development?

[Auctionman]

I'm doing a little bit of research into developing the comments that appear on my blog, ie. the number of comments to develop the discussion and have had some success with pingback etc but was wondering what everyone else was doing...

Anyone tried comment exchanges? I know this was big on the forums to get communities going but can the same effect be realised on the blogs? Does it simply devalue the comments made and be counter productive?

Thoughts?

[richrf]

Hi,

Comments are interesting, but I prefer to let them happen naturally, since I want to test which material really excites visitors and which doesn't. Anything that uses more of my time (e.g. comment exchange), is something that I want to avoid, since my time is already be utilized to capacity and personal time does not scale well. I look for ways to increase the proportion of visitors retained to the amount of time I put into my blog, so commenting on other people's blogs for the sake of getting comments, is probably too inefficient for me.

In general, I have found that visitors are very reluctant to comment, unless it is an issue that they are passionate about. Interestingly, on my blog, the most comments I ever received was on a post concerning the changing face of Google SEO. It really had nothing to do with the general theme of my blog, but visitors really liked it. So once in a while, an inspired post gets people's attention, but they are few and far between.

Even very popular blogs get only a limited number of comments, so I do not think about it too often. Blogs are pretty poor medium for interactive discussion, so if I wanted to promote discussion (and the headaches associated with it), I would probably develop a forum together with my blog.

Rich

[Bloggeries]

Best way to get comments is to give. The odd thing is you won't necessarily get back from who you give to. Just the more people see you in comments the more traffic you'll get and to some extent people reading / combing comments are types that I would assume are more inclined to leave comments. I left a comment on a blog 2 days ago and every time I check my statcounter it's there. It does work.

[Auctionman]

I am pretty active on pretty much all the blogs I read but I'm trying to pursue the discussion element as opposed to traffic...I take the forum comment on board and do utilise them but blogging is an easy medium to convey what is required and my intention is to develop a blogging environment similar to the results I see on my forums in terms of discussion..

[Ferox]

Make a post with kitten pictures. You'll get a dozen comments about how cute they are. :S

[richrf]

Originally Posted by Ferox

Make a post with kitten pictures. You'll get a dozen comments about how cute they are. :S

And other type of pictures.

Rich

[sukosaki]

Originally Posted by Ferox

Make a post with kitten pictures. You'll get a dozen comments about how cute they are. :S

LOL - there are all kinds of tactics like this but getting comments naturally are the best. The more you comment in your niche the more people will see your blog and possibly return the favor.

[Chaitanya]

My strategy for comments is simple. No strategy at all.

Instead, I focus on delivering value to my readers. The way i think about it, I want every sentence and word in my blog posts to have insights that small businesses can use. If a word does not add value, I cut it off.

The other aspect is to make your blog relevant to your target audience. Write on topics that they would love to know. If they are dying to know that information, its likely that more of your target audience will come and they have something to say.

I think comment exchange covers your weaknesses more than it helps. Rich already wrote about it. Lack of comments is a symptom. Don't kill the symptom. Work on it's cause.

Comments develop over a period. Many silently visit your blog and after some time, when they see an 'aha moment' they comment. As blog writers our job is to create those aha moments for them. Do you know about Wikipedia? only 1% of its users write often, 19% contribute occasionally 80% consumes. I do not think its too different about your visitors who comment.

Responding meaningfully to comments you receive will help second-time commenting visitors.

All the best.

Chaitanya
www.p2w2.com/blog

[Skolor]

Originally Posted by Chaitanya

My strategy for comments is simple. No strategy at all.

Personally, I feel this is one of the best strategies for doing anything online. Sure, you can spend hours every day working at trying to get traffic to your blog, but if you spent that time doing research and making really high quality posts, you'd end up with better traffic, and probably more.

You've really got two options when it comes to running a website: spend your time working on the site, and making it as good as you possibly can, or spend a little bit of time working on the site and a lot of time trying to get traffic. Guess which one leads to a better site, and thus more visitors? Sure, there are "tricks" to get good traffic fast, but usually your time would be best spent making content.

[failureblogger]

I don't think comment exchanges are good.

I think people just exchange just so they can have comments.

I like to have comments that come from the heart.