How to Encourage Conversation and Comments on Your Blog

[Maw Books]

Do you ever write the perfect post? The BEST post you've ever written? Hit publish and then anxiously await for the comments to come pouring in? And then you sit and wait and keep refreshing your email inbox? How do you encourage conversation and comments on your blog?

[Trish Collins]

Generally, book reviews don't necessarily promote conversation. If you haven't read it, what are you going to say other than "That book sounds good" or "I think I'll pass on that book"? Of course, our book blogging community is great at leaving comments on book reviews, but what I've found is that people want to connect. People comment because they have a feeling about something you've written. Because of that, my book blog is also a general blog to discuss things we people have in common. One of my highest commented posts was when I talked about how I don't like my food to touch on my plate. Well, there was also that whole big thing with The Author Who Shall Remain Nameless, that got a lot of comments, too, but I think that was more indicative of people supporting me than anything.

Getting comments is also in proportion to your traffic. The more traffic you're getting, the more comments you'll get.

Someone asked me once how I get so many comments on my posts, and I'm almost embarassed to say that it's taken WORK. Back in February/March/April, I was spending 20-30 hours EVERY WEEK leaving comments on other blogs. That's a lot of time spent making connections!

Another thing I've heard helps with getting people to leave comments is when you reply to the comments. Because of the blogging platform I use, wordpress.com, I don't reply to comments on my blog, but I do reply via email. Wordpress.com will be making it so that you can reply to a comment and it will appear under the comment you're replying to, like a thread. I know for me, I like to know that a blogger is actually reading my comment! If I've taken the time to post a comment, it's nice to know the blogger is reading it. I know some people will follow-up on their comments and see if the blogger responded to their comment, but I don't have time to do that.

Just my two cents. :-)

[Paula Krapf]

Whether it's our own blog or blogs by our authors, we always recommend blog commenting on other blogs in order to encourage conversation on your own blog because it really does work, especially if you comment on blogs with high traffic.

Besides networking with other book bloggers you can expand into commenting on publisher's blogs (such as HarperStudio, http://www.26thstory.com/blog/) bookseller's blogs (Book Soup, http://booksoupbookstore.blogspot.com/), high ranking sites that talk about books and culture (MediaBistro, http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/) and also blogging sites (such as problogger, http://www.problogger.net/, which has already been mentioned here, and where you can share your own blogging experiences) and so on.

You don't have to limit yourselves to book reviews for your blog, but it's up to you how much "other" content you want to offer and whether you're even interested in talking about yourself or other issues (and blogging on hot topics - politics, culture, etc. - can definitely draw traffic, but that has both good and bad points).

We also recommend tagging and using social networking sites for your blog posts so that people can find your blog when they are looking for information on those topics, and then they have a chance to become part of the conversation.

Create your keywords and then input them at a site such as http://www.marketwest.co.uk/tools/index.php, which generates the code so you can cut and paste it into your blog.

Also take advantage of social bookmarking sites: Digg, delicious, yahoo, blinklist, spurl, reddit, furl, and stumbleupon.

If it's too much work to tag and bookmark each of your posts, choose a few each week and focus on those. That way you'll still have time to eat, sleep, and of course read more books. :)

[Maw Books]

That's something that I would like to become more aware of: publisher and critic blogs. If you'd like to be seen as an "authority" I suppose it makes sense to hang out where they do.

[Britt C.]

I honestly think the review I just posted (the post title is "Love and Ambilvalence") is the best I've done... But I don't get a lot of comments in general. My blog just isn't "out there".

How many views do you guys get a day, on average?

Mine is totally wildly all over the place, but I've never had more than like 11 in a single day.

[Maw Books]

Hey Britt. I don't think it's necessarily all about the number of page views you get a day but whether or not you are out there participating in the community in general. There are a lot of ways to get your blog "out there" and how you do that is up to you. There are TONS of weekly meme's to participate in, carnivals, challenges, etc. Start being more proactive in promoting your blog. Make yourself known by commenting on other blogs regularly. Most will follow you back to your blog.

It's hard to write something that we like so well and have nobody see it. But we need to know that you are there to read it in the first place. I have to admit, that I've been remiss in commenting on your blog since I discovered it a month ago. I will do better especially since we're neighbors!

And BTW, when I just left a comment right now I noticed that you have comments open only to those who have Google accounts or Open ID, which leaves everybody else out. Personally, I've never registered with Open ID because I don't want to take the time. I also don't like commenting under my Google account. I'd rather have my link back go straight to my blog rather than my blogger profile. I don't blog with blogger so it makes sense for me to not want to link there. In other words, people need to be registered somehow to leave a comment. I know a lot of people have it set up like you, but it's always been a pet peeve of mine.

Take advantage of the tips found here in the forum, write effectively, write personally and you'll see those stats increase. I remember when I only had 3-11 hits a day. Thank goodness those days are behind me and yours soon will too.

[Britt C.]

Okay, I fixed that, so anyone can comment now.
I have no idea what a "meme" is.
And I do have to confess, I look at your guys' blogs but I don't usually comment..... shame on me!

[Maw Books]

I don't know the official definition of a meme but it's kind of where people are all talking about the same thing. Somebody creates a "list" of sorts and then tags other bloggers to participate.

Lots of bloggers love these, others choose not to do them. It's up to your blogging style to decide what you'd like to do.

A Novel Challenge blog is a excellent resource for reading challenges and events across the blogosphere. There are things like Sunday Salon, Booking Through Thursday, Weekly Geeks, Friday Finds, Library Loot, etc, etc, etc, etc. Too many to count.

[Paperback Traveler]

Post early in the morning (9am EST or earlier) and save your best posts for Mon-Thur. The majority of internet traffic occurs during working hours on those days and it stands to reason that if you time your posts for when people are checking their feed readers and surfing their favorite sites, you'll be able to convince more people to comment. This doesn't mean that you have to write your posts while you're at work, you can write them when it is convenient for you and set them up to post in the morning during the work week.

[Amy]

How do you preschedulers do it ?? Seriously, one post takes me about 45 minutes to write. I just can't imagine sitting there for five hours to get a week's worth of posts in...I want to, I just can't seem to make it happen!

[Britt C.]

I actually love prescheduling, but the last one I did that way didn't post! I ended up having to delete it and repost it. So now I'm wary....
My posts don't take me quite that long to write, so it's not bad to sit for a while and do a bunch.

[Paperback Traveler]

You don't have to write out all of your posts at once. You can write posts whenever you normally write them and then just schedule them to publish at a later time/date. I happen to find that I use my time more efficiently when I can block out several hours and write a bunch of posts, but that's not the only way to do things.

[Trish Collins]

Yeah, my absolute slowest day is Saturday. Sunday's actually a pretty good day, and I think it's because people are getting ready for the week again.

I rarely type up a post and then post it. I usually have about 10 drafts all ready to go, and I just decide that day what I want to post. I don't like doing too many book reviews one right after the other, so I like being able to pick and choose.