How Interactive Are You In Your Comments?
This is one of those topics that everyone preaches about, yet fall short even on their own blog.
It isn’t really a secret why this happens … it’s hard to maintain ongoing conversations with readers for years after publishing a particular piece of content.
If you’re like a lot of bloggers, your content probably receives traffic years after it’s published, which is awesome … yet requires constant attention as well (unless you close off comments a certain amount of days after it’s published).
That said, there are a lot of bloggers that simply don’t interact with their readership … at all! If you’re new to blogging, can you imagine getting five comments on a post you just published and then not responding!? It’s one of the most gratifying experiences a blogger feels as a publisher, yet when it comes to delivering what readers find gratifying (a response and connection with the creator, writer, publisher, blogger — whatever you call youself), some fall short.
Though this bit of Feedback Friday is rather straightforward (you’re either interacting or not), I feel it should be explored further.
Let’s take a look at a few blogs (for those that dare, please submit your along with a link below), and see how the blogger might be able to strike up an even more engaging interaction with their readers.
How interactive are you in your comments sections?
Submit your blog url for free feedback!
Christopher is the editor of FuelYourBlogging & FuelYourVenture. He’s an abstract painter striving to make full-time living from his creative work by the time he’s 30, and shares his journey at CreativeBlogger … Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook
For the very few comments that I do get, I respond to all of them. I find great joy if a post I publish was good enough that it got readers to comment on it.
Totally! Isn’t it the best feeling to interact with people, regardless where each party is in the world!?
I find it amazing we’ve become such a community using the web.
I agree with John. Many people don’t comment (for whatever reason) so it is an honor when they do take the time to do so. Good or bad, feedback is always welcome. If you don’t respond, then you are disregarding readers’ attempt to communicate and are not encouraging them to do it more often.
Not sure if you’ve ever read my blog Chris, but it’s something I’ve preached and been doing for a long time now. I respond to every comment. It took me a long time to start doing it because I didn’t really think anyone cared. When I realized they did, I started to interact and it’s great. I wouldn’t change it.
Bloggers that don’t do it are missing out s far as I’m concerned. It’s also helped me grow some nice business relationships offline and on.
John is right – you MUST interact if you want to have a growing readership. I read many blogs because the blogger interacts – and almost ignore many excellent blogs most of the time because I know the blogger is never going to reply to any questions or comments I have for them. If they don’t want to talk to me, why do I want to read, share and talk to them? Time is too precious.
I’m all for interaction with my commenters. I usually always go back to the comments form on the post and respond one by one to each commenter. However I really like the way your comment section is set up where you can respond individually and carry on a real conversation. How can I set that up?