One of the biggest mistakes committed by a blogger would be not replying to his comments. Why is it really important?
1. Replying to comments is the best way to get returning visitors.
We can categorize the visitors of a blog into two.
a. Who do have Relation with your blog
b. Who doesn’t have a relation with your blog
By relation what I meant is like something,
Once a user posted a comment inside the blog, the blog has got something from the visitor or in short the visitor has contributed to the blog.
The second type only act as visitor to the blog and doesn’t contribute anything to the blog. Consider a scenario were a visitor of the second type asks you something as a comment and you didn’t reply to it. The visitor will get a negative feeling about your blog. Even though not same, it is somewhat similar to not replying to facebook chats. You will be definitely embarrassed if some one doesn’t reply to you in facebook chats, right? Consider the converse, you make an impression before the visitor and he will return back to the website. Replying to users comments gives the user a feeling that he do have some respect/role in the blog which forces him to come back.
Have a look at this post of Neil Patel from Quicksprout where he asked his visitors to ask any question to him regarding the e-business . He is almost reaching 1000 comments for a 200 word post. He really builds a relation with the visitor, you can find that he’ve valued each and every commentators(And for sure, these visitors will be very much pleased and they will read his other articles too) .
2. Better ranking in Google.
For sure, Google monitors the comments happening to a blog post. What should Google think if a post doesn’t have a single comment irrespective of good amount of visitors? Visitors didn’t find the post that much special , right? While back to back comments indicate that your post is very pleasing and visitors thinks it is special. Replying to a comment makes your comments section very much active and strong. Will any one bother to ask a question if no one replies? Administrator of a website is like a leader and everyone would be asking questions to admin. And your single reply can in turn bring many new comments(as a part of the conversation).
3. More content which gives you additional rankings for new keywords.
Google or any search engine tracks the comments for the post too. For instance assume that you wrote a post about fruits and some one replied to the post containing information about vegetables. The very same post can now bring traffic for “vegetable” related keywords.
I’ll explain this scenario with the same post from quicksprout which I mentioned before. Neil asked his visitors to post some questions, and now the visitors asked lots of questions touching different sections in the e-business .
- Blogging
- Internet Jobs
- E-Commerce
- SEO
- His experiences
- Saas
- Internet/Digital marketing
- Niche Websites
- Finance
- Affiliates
- Making Money Online
Well, Neil replied to them very convincingly. All these are genuine contents and what Neil will be gaining is additional traffic. You can also see that he have linked almost all of his main posts in different comments, all those posts (old and new) are getting real boost through this method.
4. Comment count is a status symbol for a post.
Facebook like count is now a big criteria to determine the value of a brand. Similarly, the comment count is also very significant for a blog post. Personally when I find a blog post from Google, I just drag down to check how much comments did the post receive(especially if it is some kind of tutorial). And if I see lots of comments especially thanks giving or “Great Tips ” I get more convinced with the post and starts reading it. Almost all post from QuickSprout do have more than 170 comments.
5. More comments means, more networking and more personal data
Personal data is really important in the internet business. Usually through wordpress comments, you can get the email of the commentator. You can promote your business through these emails collected. Collaborating the 1st point which I mentioned here (about building a relation with the visitor) and this point where you collect the data , the email promotions should work well. The commentator does already have a trust in you and he cannot easily turn down your email.
6. Building your brand
Just assume that you are walking through a street and stopped in the middle seeing a crowd. You sees a person explaining different kind of things all around the world to the crowd. People are asking him different questions and he do have brilliant explanations to their queries. What all thoughts will pop into your mind?
- Who is this guy? Where is he from ? Let me ask some one about him, his knowledge is superficial!
- The crowd is really big that he should be a popular(special) person.
- What if I ask a question to him?
The commenting section of your blog can be considered as a replica of the above scenario. Like, you came to see some ones post via Google, and you did see a strong comment section. Lets check the replicas of the above mentioned points(in the real world scenario).
- You just went through his comments and found that his knowledge is extra ordinary. Checking the about page and reading his bio.
- You found tons of comments so that you will come into an assumption that the blogger is a popular person.
- Yes, you do have that question for him . You can post it as a comment.
For sure, commenting is one of the best way in building your brand (personal or even for a product). Back to back comments and doubt resolutions builds your trust in front of the readers . And as everyone know, once a brand is built ,it is very easy to setup a business. If you have brand name in the blogosphere, it is very easy to get new and returning visitors. You need not do any SEO or other marketing strategies as you’ve already got a brand.
Hope you enjoyed this article about comments in a blog . What is your approach to comments? Do you promote comments in your blog? Are you interested in commenting in other blogs?
