Better Your Blog in a Week: #5
Continuing the 7 part improve your blog series, today will be a little different. The first three parts were all about things you can do outside your blog, and yesterday was all about managing your time when there is very little of it. The author may write the blog, but without the users who read, subscribe, comment and interact, the blog is nothing.
#5: Offer an Incentive for Participation
The will of a reader to comment only goes so far as to join into or start a discussion. Many users, whether you like it or not, want something in return for their comments left on your site. What incentives do you offer for the participation that keeps your blog alive? There’s many things you can do, and here’s a couple I do:
- Top commentators for every month have a link on every page, including the PR5 homepage. Not bad for leaving 5 or so comments over 30 days.
- I respond to every reader email I get, albeit not many. I have no problem answering questions, giving thoughts on a design or anything as long as you don’t send me a thousand lines of code and an error
- At random times I dedicate a whole post the top commentators, like this one. I haven’t done this lately, but I will do one this month. Just so you know
- The odd time you do catch me on IM, I’ll talk readers and help people out with problems.
There are many other things you can do besides installing the top commentators and dofollow plugins, as well as being open to communication. Offering a cash incentive for top commentator would probably produce huge results.
Come to think of it, I’m nearing 1000 comments and there might be some sort of give away at that time. That’s also not to interfere with the contest that has been delayed (the more it waits, the better the prize gets).
So today, give your readers a little thanks for making your blog’s world go ’round. A page full of posts all saying “0 comments” is no fun, now is it?
Leave a comment
Florchakh
August 19th, 2007 at 9:28 PM
Bloggy marketing, this is nice.
To be honest I usually don’t write comments on blogs without Top Commentators. The rule is clear, you give a bunch of worth comments every month (and build a comment community by the way), and the blog author rewards it within his sidebar.
PS. I don’t want to play the guru but I do really think that setting some limitation for your Tag Cloud might be a VERY good idea
Connor Wilson
August 19th, 2007 at 10:30 PM
It had grown to more of a “tag weed”, hasn’t it? I’ll have a poke around the UTW code. And I agree, the top commentators is the least you can really do.
Adam McKerlie
August 19th, 2007 at 10:51 PM
The Top Commentators is definitely a great idea. I’ll comment if I like the post whether or not theres a Top Commentators widget, but if there is one I’ll comment that much more.
Another great way to improve your blog.
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