5 Ridiculously Easy Ways to Get More Comments on Your Blog

January 14, 2013

Do you remember that scene from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” where Ben Stein plays a stodgy economics teacher who has no idea how to engage his class? Here’s a refresher:

What better jumping off point for a blog post about how to get more comments on your blog posts.

I reference that scene because it illustrates an important lesson. The teacher had some good information to share, but just didn’t know how to engage his students. For content marketers, the parallel is pretty obvious: If you want to get more engagement around your blog posts, articles, and other content — and specifically more comments — you’ve got to use the right tactics to appeal to your audience.

So what can you do to get more comments? Here are 5 suggestions:

1) Start with a Great Headline

The first way to get more comments is to ensure your blog post has a compelling headline. You not only want to pique your audience’s interest, but also provoke some kind of response. Sometimes that can mean going over the top. For example, if I publish a post to my content marketing blog called “Why Content Marketing is Completely Overrated” chances are that some of my readers — who are mostly other content marketer — will be inclined to either agree with me or tell me why I’m completely off base.
Of course, going over the top to make a point can easily come off as a gimmick, so use this tactic sparingly and wisely. Other options you should try include crafting your headlines as a questions rather than declarations or making bold statements.

2) Offer a Strong Point of View

Offer up strong opinions, even if they’re not always popular. Any time you take a definitive stand on an issue, you’re prompting your reader to either agree with you or to offer an alternative point of view. This is by far the best suggestion you’re ever going to hear about how to get more comments. I doubt anyone has a better one to offer.

3) Talk About Other People

Another way to help promote comments is to write about other people who are active online. For example, Jacob Klein contributed a great post about how to get more comments on SEOMoz. Marcus Sheridan also has an insightful post called “10 Ways to Get Tons of Massive Comments on Your Blog Every Time” that I found really interesting. You might also like this article from Darren Rowse: 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog. When you talk about other people, and link to their content, they will get a notification of a pingback to their site, which could prompt them to come check out your post and, hopefully, leave a comment.

4) Ask Open-ended Questions

Another tactic is to end your posts with a provocative question to spark a conversation. Put the onus on your readers to share their opinions. Encourage them to prove you wrong, critique what you’ve written, or just to add their own ideas to the conversation.

5) Always Respond Right Away

Any time that you get a comment, you’ve got to respond as quickly as possible. When you do so, you can leverage people’s enthusiasm and momentum to get them to leave additional comments. Plus, once future visitors come to your post and see that some comments have already been left, they may feel more inclined to add in their two cents.

So how’d I do? Is this the best post ever or are there some other tactics out there that you’ve used to get more comments on your blogs and other content? Scroll down to the comment box below, people. You know what to do…

 
 
 
 
 
 

Content Marketing Director

<strong>Kevin Cain</strong> is the Content Marketing Director for <a href="http://www.bluechipcommunication.com.au/">BlueChip Communication</a>, Australia's leading financial services communication firm. Before joining BlueChip, Kevin was the Director of Content Strategy for OpenView.