While I was writing my blog’s first birthday post it got me thinking – why do bloggers follow bloggers? It may sound like a silly question, but after one year of social blogging, I had 300 people following me. That’s not many, but it was 300 more than I had a year before. So, how do you encourage comments on your blog?
And I chose to follow 70 bloggers myself. So there were at least 370 of us on the same or similar wavelengths.
My Blog was not a business at the time. But if yours is, lets look at why you should encourage comments on your blog. And how to do it without overload.
My Blog was a casual eclectic mix of arts and humanities. Unfocussed, I was also writing articles for an online magazine about ex-pats, travellers and other creatives, wandering the earth while blogging about their lives and experiences.
The more I delved into their writing and experiences, the more I wanted to know what people thought about my blog, so I could write more of the stuff they liked. I wanted to get more comments and know how to to get more likes. I didn’t know why people with blogs were following me, and none of the bloggers I followed knew why I was following them.
Why? Because none of us asked the question. Why are you following me?
Nobody asked me why I followed them, and I never asked anyone why they followed me.
Then, I enabled comments inviting people to leave a comment on the posts. And I found myself justifying my publications to fault-finders and trolls who ate into my time and confidence. Anyone who wanted to comment could contact me by email, so I disabled comments and happiness returned.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Why are Blogs Important?
Good Bloggers focus on helping others.
Blogs are important because they are a part of the internet, contributing to the world’s growing information system. Informational blogs are a vital part of modern education which feeds the search engines that deliver information to the public.
I ran a campaign which led to the answer to the question – How to encourage comments on your blog? Most people have little interest in revealing or discussing their reasons for following others. But there is valuable data available.
Why you Should Follow other Bloggers.
When I follow a blog, it can be for a multitude of reasons and as a blogger I welcome followers views on my website. I want people to tell me what they like or don’t like so I can improve. And the best blogs to follow are the ones that bring something of value to your own blog and the ones you enjoy reading most.
In time you will gather a lot of information, most of which you will discard. The best will form part of a valuable repository or knowledge library.
In the early days I followed some blogs because:
- I just loved the writing.
- Others had content which was helpful and informative.
- I was intrigued by the personal experiences of others.
And so it went.
There were many reasons, but in the main I wanted to make my own blog better. I needed feedback from other bloggers to help me produce consistently good content. I was a dry sponge.
What is the Obvious Question we don’t ask Bloggers?
Why are you following me?
It’s an easy question to ask and easy to answer. Yet no-one has ever asked me, and I doubted many thought about it.
So I wrote around asking others
‘Thanks for following me. I’d love to know why.‘
A few responded. Those who did were kind and helpful. But I was disappointed most people didn’t reply. Maybe they thought I was crackers, a naïve voice in the wilderness.
But I was a little surprised, and I’m still interested to know, why?
So how can Bloggers get Feedback?
If you are a new blogger with the comments enabled, and no one COMMENTS or LIKES a post, you may assume the post has no value.
Don’t pay too much attention or worry about it, because it is not likely to be the case.
Most readers don’t understand the value of feedback and how helping you can benefit them in future posts.
So, how can bloggers get feedback?
Use Google Analytics
The best feedback is provided by Google Analytics free resource for websites. Over the years I have learned how it works and how much valuable information it contains.
Use Google Analytics data to help build a success strategy for your website or blog. It will give you details of visitors:
- Their actions when they come to your website.
- How long they stay and
- the pages and posts they browse.
If you want to see behaviour patterns it’s a must, that provides important statistics to maximize site performance.
Analyse your Blog Posts
Start by analysing posts. You may feel the need to reconsider what you have written. Posts that fall on deaf ears may need to be trashed or re-written otherwise they become redundant clutter. That could hurt your domain authority.
Culling and re-writing posts is important as a blog evolves and attracts new readers. A blog should never become cluttered and bogged down with irrelevant posts. Readers are lazy so by the time a blog has accumulated 250+ posts, even if many are still good and relevant, they will be buried deep under the latest posts and will seldom, if ever, be read again.
Why do some of your posts do well, while nobody ever sees others? You need to find out so you don’t keep writing to any empty stadium. But here are 7 pointers.
- Make sure you find keywords that people are typing into search bars.
- Make sure your post answers the query.
- Check Google analytics to see if your posts are ranking on page one of Google. Anything after page 1 will struggle.
- Link to other relevant posts on your blog and sell the links so they will be clicked. Don’t just link to any word at random. Create good anchor text.
- Find out where your users are coming from at Google Analytics – User Acquisition.
- Don’t write big blocks of text. Break everything up into bite size chunks (1 to 3 sentences), use the header tags and bold important points.
- Don’t write for everyone. Aim at your target audience.
in the meantime I recommend watching the video from Income School. It will give you some excellent advice. Check it out.
Re-engineer Old Posts
Bloggers need to write and re-work articles to maintain quality and relevance to make their blog evergreen. Emphasise quality and not quantity. Every post must have a purpose – to entertain, inform and share knowledge.
We may use our sites for many things:
- An author platform to showcase our books,
- a gallery to display our photography, or
- a virtual kitchen to teach cooking.
The permutations are endless. And in every instance, we measure our effectiveness by the number of visitors we receive every day. Their engagement and their reaction to our posts can be guaged by the data Google Analytics provides us.
Make Quality your Focus
When you start a blog you will most likely find it difficult to resist being impatient. You may fire off as many posts as you can, quickly, in an effort to fill it with content. Most of us have done it.
I know I did. But it’s counterproductive, so take time, as you progress, to tidy-up or trash old posts so your blog becomes a library of good, evergreen content which is easy to find.
Quality not quantity and Less is more are hackneyed phrases, but they still hold good.
Read other Blogs
Keep reading other blog posts and search for good, well-written content which you can link to. It is a time-consuming process so when you find a post of value give it a LIKE and COMMENT by email, to show appreciation for another’s contribution to our world. Then maybe add something or ask for more information.
It helps other bloggers to improve their content. And if everyone does it then content will get better and better and readers will benefit.
Most non-bloggers don’t appreciate how important feedback is.
Be Sure you Target the Right Audience
Make sure you hit the target. If you are targeting the wrong audience, it doesn’t matter how good the content of your posts is. It will fall on deaf ears. More likely no ears.
Would you try and sell chewing gum to a man with no teeth?
Blogging should be enjoyable. If it isn’t read my post about how to make it fun.
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Updated April 2024
I gave up trying to figure it out a while ago. It probably means a post hasn’t hit the right people so there’s a good reason to re-post it. What I do is copy the old post then can it and rewrite it. I usually find I do it better now and often change important things and add new stuff. Unless you write something which is only relevant to a specific time it should be recyclable and brought up to date. Thanks for the comment C.
I find that some of my posts that I thought were interesting received little attention, yet others have struck a chord. A couple, I wrote years ago that I wouldn’t expect to have broad appeal, are still garnering comments. I can’t figure it out. (And I confess sometimes, in my rush to post something before my self-imposed deadline I don’t scrutinize my writing.) Maybe I will follow your suggestion to “tidy-up” – it hadn’t really occurred to me to scuttle old posts.