Readers Giving You the Silent Treatment? Why No One Comments On Your Blog (and How to Fix It Fast)
)
When it comes to the business of blogging, one of the ways to gauge the success of a blog post is by comments. The other ways of measuring the success of a blog post include retweets, shares, stumbles and of course, traffic.
So you wrote a rock star blog post, got the thumbs up from your trusted inner circle before pressing the publish button and you got nothing. Zero, zip, nadda. Not a single comment. Why the silent treatment from your readers?
Why No One Comments on Your Blog (and How to Fix It)
Blogging Mistake #1: They haven’t seen it – This seems obvious, right? If they don’t know your blog exists, they can’t comment on it. How is your audience going to support your work when you’re not telling them about it?
There’s an important difference between sharing and pushing. It’s perfectly acceptable for you to share links to your blog posts with your different communities (social media, email, etc.). It quite another when you’re pushing out links to your work all the time, especially if you’re neglecting the key relationship building aspects of online marketing.
People have to know you, like you, and trust you to some degree before they’re going to commit to taking even a small step in working with you (and the first of those steps is usually reading or sharing one of your blog posts).
Blogging Mistake #2: They haven’t read it – People who gloss a post, or see your link, but don’t act on it, don’t have a reason to comment. They’re not committed to the content you’ve written because you haven’t pulled them into your writing. People won’t comment if they don’t know what it’s about.
Use powerful headlines that draw readers in. Be careful not to use dishonest headlines that make false promises. Once you have them, use all that formatting you were taught in English class (bullets, subheads, numbering) to keep your reader engaged.
Make it about them, about you, or make it controversial to open up conversation. At the end of your post, ask them for their comments. You’d be surprised how just asking for comments will often increase the number of comments you get on a post.
Blogging Mistake #3: They don’t feel compelled to speak – Ho-hum posts get far less commentary than something spectacular. Folks like @SarahRobinson make an event out of inviting guests to contribute to a blog series that’s centered on a particular topic.
Her 28 Days to Fierce Loyalty series garnered upwards of 200 comments on a single post. She replies to every comment, and invites folks to interact with each other in the comments section, but without a spectacular theme, the series itself would fall flat.
Create posts that are compelling. Length isn’t usually as important as telling a story, or sharing a perspective on a topic that matters to people in your area of interest. Both long and short posts can command an equivalent number of comments on the same blog. It’s the content that matters, and if you want more comments, the content better matter to your readers.
Blogging Mistake #4: It’s too hard to leave a comment – Ever give up after making multiple attempts to leave a comment? Your readers will not struggle to figure out the captcha code and simply leave without adding a comment. Another fatal flaw is when the comments area is below so many ads that your readers don’t even realize there is a comments area.
Make it easy for people to leave comments. Some pro bloggers have even gone so far as to put an arrow graphic on the page pointing directing to the comments area, along with a request for readers to leave a comment.
There are also several comment “systems” available for WordPress that make it easy to keep people engaged after they leave their comment. That way, if someone replies to their comment, they get notified, and can come back and continue the conversation.
These are the biggest reasons why your blog isn’t getting the comments you deserve. Keep it easy, keep it about them, keep it on their radar, and keep them reading. Do that, and they’ll keep commenting!
Don’t forget to leave a comment, question or tip in the comments below!
Lisa Robbin Young is a performing artist, author, business coach and mentor, founding multiple businesses in her years as an entrepreneur. Lisa brings a sharp, analytical mind to being an entrepreneur in today’s multi-tasking world. Her ability to brainstorm and break problems into their smallest parts earned her a prestigious position in The Governor’s Problem Solving Institute before she started high school. According to her mother, Lisa’s been asking tough questions for over 30 years.
A National Merit and National Achievement Scholar, Lisa prides herself on both book smarts and common sense. An award winning writer, speaker, graphic artist and composer, Lisa has recorded two full-length albums, and published numerous articles, poems and literary works. She blends logic and creativity in her approach to life and business. She’s both directed and performed in numerous local theater productions and is currently working on an edu-tainment television series for the web. She also built one of the first ever e-commerce websites in the early 1990′s. And her kitchen sink is still full of dishes from time to time.
Lisa is known for her direct, no-nonsense approach to helping entrepreneurs pin-point the obstacles that keep them from being successful. She pulls no punches and isn’t afraid to tell it like it is – a refreshing, disruptive approach to our common thought patterns. Her breakthrough book “Home Party Solution” and the correlating web project, Direct Sales Classroom, provides specific hands-on training for direct sales consultants that want to build a profitable business, instead of an expensive hobby. Her coaching project, Business Action Hero, helps entrepreneurs find elegantly simple solutions to be more profitable in life and business. Lisa’s new book, The Secret Watch, is expected to be released early 2012.