How To Increase The Number Of Comments Your Blog Gets

[Richard N Adams]

While many of us realise how important the concept of building an active community arounds our blogs is, depending on the niche and traffic levels your blog is in it can be hard to get your readers adding comments.

And yet like a discussion forum, it seems that the more comments you already have, the more likely people are to add their own 2 cents worth.

I have a blog on a popular topic with a reasonable number of visitors each day but it is getting no comments at all and I have been thinking about ways to rectify this. Interestingly, I noticed recently that the video versions of the articles from my blog, which I had added to YouTube, had dozens and dozens of comments on them. Bingo! While these videos *are* available on my blog, it's the videos on YouTube that are eliciting a considerable number of comments.

Which set me thinking... If only I could add *those* comments from YouTube to my own blog, it would look more popular, attract more interactivity from new users and of course help to insert yet more keyword-focused text into my blog.

After a search I found a free Wordpress plugin that will do just that -

WordPress › Genki Youtube Comments WordPress Plugins

Problem solved!

The moral of the story is - if you're not getting the comments you'd like to your blog, try uploading some related videos to YouTube, and if you start getting comments there you can use the plugin mentioned to mirror them on your own blog.

[sgooey]

Yes, that is a pretty slick plug-in, if it works. So can you 'borrow' comments from any video?

[Richard N Adams]

Originally Posted by sgooey

So can you 'borrow' comments from any video?

I'm still playing around with it myself - and I have to admit that I have only tried it on my own videos - but essentially you just add a custom field to the blog post you want to add comments to and then include the video ID from YouTube, so I think that would probably be possible, yes.

All the best,
Richard

[BlueJam]

All this takes is a little php, cURL and mysql and you can do it yourself, not just from YouTube, but from anywhere. Well worth spending time learning.

[Richard N Adams]

BlueJam - Are there any resources you can point us towards to help us with this?

Richard

[largedogfan]

Thank you for sharing!

[RichardLegg]

Don't forget that you can simply ASK for comments on your blog.

Make sure to have a strong call to action and ask them for something, whether it be an opinion, a question, sharing a tip etc.

People often need to be told what to do, so don't be afraid to do so :-)


Richard

[Mike Hill]

Encourage ongoing discussion about your post in the comments section and you need to participate right in the comments as well.

At the end of your posts leave open ended questions people can respond to in the comments.

Mike Hill

[bloggerr]

i've got more spammers than real comments. and that really piss me off. i don't know what to do.

[nata_sha]

Why don't write posts that will push readers to comment. Ask questions, give new ideas, introduce some controversy ... there are so many ways to do that

[Richard N Adams]

Originally Posted by bloggerr

i've got more spammers than real comments. and that really piss me off. i don't know what to do.

I presume you have an anti-spam plugin though - such as Akismet - so surely spammers aren't too much of a pain because most of the junk gets filtered before you even see it...?

Richard

[Nathan Hangen]

Originally Posted by Mike Hill

Encourage ongoing discussion about your post in the comments section and you need to participate right in the comments as well.

At the end of your posts leave open ended questions people can respond to in the comments.

Mike Hill

The perfect strategy imo. End posts with a question, comment in other blogs, and respond to every single comment.

That is what works for me.