5 Ways to Encourage Blog Comments

 Consider this everyday scenario for a moment. You’re searching for information on a subject you’re interested in, and in doing so you check out a blog. The content is decent enough, but not a single person has bothered to share their thoughts, feedback or opinions in the comments section below.

Now, consider the same scenario, only in this instance, the comments section is alive with debate and discussion.

Which of the two would immediately hit home as the most prominent, appealing and authoritative post? Which of the blogs would you assume to be more popular and worth keeping an eye on?

Blog comments aren’t just about collecting feedback and suggestions from a target audience. They’re among the most important signs of engagement – they can even be a hugely powerful SEO ranking factor.

In which case, what can you do to encourage more blog comments? If you’re posting on a regular basis but seldom see anyone taking the time to join the discussion, how can you turn things around?

1. Target conversation-worthy content

For one thing, you could start by targeting the kind of conversation-worthy content that’s guaranteed to stir debate. This means keeping a close eye on current events that are relevant to your niche, and prioritising those your readers are most likely to feel strongly about. Don’t be afraid to stir a little controversy – anything that sparks debate is pure dynamite for engagement.

2. Start the conversation yourself

Not literally, but there’s no reason why you can’t ask your colleagues, your friends, your family members or even your employees to set the wheels in motion. It’s a simple case of getting the ‘snowball effect’ up and running, which can be as easy as manually starting their discussion. Just as long as the comments are valid, original and in some way meaningful, it doesn’t really matter who they come from.

3. Respond to comments

More importantly, still, you need to ensure that every comment you receive is responded to. Even if it’s as simple as a “couldn’t agree more, thanks for getting in touch!” or something similar, you need to show your audience that you are listening to and appreciating their feedback. If there’s scope for doing so, feel free to get as deep into the debate as you like and keep the ball rolling.

4. Make commenting on your posts easy

You also need to make it as easy as possible for people to leave comments on your posts. It should be as simple as entering text in the box below and hitting the bottom. No need to submit personal details, no requirement to open an account and no lengthy verification checks to go through. Comments are almost always left on the spur of the moment – make it quick and easy to comment or they simply will not bother.

5. Don’t forget the CTA

Lastly, slipping a gentle reminder into the mix can make all the difference. If you want people to comment on your posts, tell them. Don’t just give them the opportunity to comment – make use of calls to action and invite them to join the conversation. And don’t forget to express your appreciation, making sure they know their thoughts and opinions are important to you.

Popular Blog Ideas for Your New Business Venture

It’s no secret that blogging has the potential to be an incredibly lucrative business venture. All over the world, bloggers in growing numbers are asking and receiving huge sums of cash as influencers, having earned extensive and dedicated audiences.

Technically speaking, most people could achieve at least some kind of success with their own personal blog. After all, we’re all experts at something…right?

The secret to coming up with a great idea for a new blog lies in two things. The first of which being to focus on something you know and are passionate about, the second being to focus on a subject of interest to other people.

A difficult balancing act to pull off?

Perhaps not, as there are more diverse and wide-reaching subjects of interest to the masses these days than ever before. So if you’re looking to start a blog business venture and need a little inspiration, here’s quick rundown of just a few of the most popular web topics you might like to consider:

1. Self-improvement. 

 Any advice and guidance you could offer those looking to improve themselves, both in professional and private capacities alike.

2. Health & Fitness for Busy People. 

Why not base your blog on the kinds of simple, effective and workable health and fitness strategies that suit those with very little time on their hands?

3. Languages. 

 If you speak a foreign language even to a relatively modest extent, you could start a blog to help those interested in picking up the basics.

4. Budget Travel. 

Everybody loves travelling and the vast majority of travellers prefer to do so for the lowest price possible. Why not share all those budget travel tips and tricks you’ve come up with over the years?

5. Dining Out. 

 If you’re the type that likes to eat out on a regular basis, why restrict your comments and recommendations to other sites like TripAdvisor? There’s nothing to stop you starting your own site/blog that could become the next big thing.

6. Recipes. 

The key to success if looking to share recipes lies in offering something different. Or at least, something with a very specific focus. Meals for under £3, dishes that exclude certain ingredients, cooking for fussy kids in less than 15 minutes and so on.

7. How-to Hacks. 

 Simple guides and tutorials covering everyday tasks and projects are spectacularly popular these days. So why not share your own unique and innovative ways of getting things done with other people?

8. Relationships. 

 Likewise, millions of people from all over the world turn to the web every day for advice and guidance on various relationship issues. Whether serious, light hearted or downright hysterical, surely you’ve plenty of words of wisdom to share!

9. Music. 

 Share your thoughts, reviews, recommendations and so on to those with similar tastes in music to your own. Or perhaps go one step further and base your blog around playing musical instruments, production, editing and so on.

10. Sports.

Last but not least, if you can bring your own unique voice, tone and style to a dedicated sports blog, you could be golden. Which technically should be relatively easy – just as long as you focus on a sport or activity of any kind you are genuinely passionate about!

 

A Monthly Checklist to Keep Your Blog On Track

Give your business blog appropriate time and attention and it will reward you for your efforts. By contrast, neglect it and it may bring you nothing but bother.

The problem being that while so many business blogs start out great, their respective ‘owners’ sooner or later begin letting things slip. It becomes less of a priority, quality begins to slide and the benefits it once brought to the business slowly but surely disappear.

Which is why it’s a good idea to perform on-going health checks on your blog, just to ensure it and you are doing your jobs properly. It doesn’t have to be difficult – simply get into the habit of working with the following monthly checklist and you’ll find it much easier to keep your blog on track:

Interpret Data

First of all, owning and operating a blog – even a successful one – isn’t enough. If your blog is successful, you need to find out why and capitalise on whatever it is you are doing right. If it isn’t successful, you need to know what you are doing wrong and change things accordingly. Or if it’s ok but could certainly be improved, the same applies. Reviewing analytics and working with the data you collect should represent one of the most important core duties in the operation of your business blog. If it doesn’t, you are effectively grasping blindly in the dark and have no idea how or why your blog is performing as it is.

Rank Entries

When dealing with data, take a good look through your most successful entries for the month or year to date, in order to rank them in terms of performance. It’s crucially important to keep a log of your successes and failures in terms of entries and headlines, in order to determine what your target audience members do and do not respond well to. Focus on things like number of shares, time spent on each article, number of clicks, bounce rates and so on. This way, you’ll have yourself something of a blueprint mapping out the most successful posts/titles for your blog.

Itemize Content
Variety is the spice of life – something that applies to blog management just as much as anything else. In order to ensure that you are providing your readers with sufficient variety, it’s good to get into the habit of itemising content. For example, establish headers like video tutorials, infographics, podcasts, lists, opinion pieces and so on, checking each month that each category has been given sufficient attention.

Strategize for Next Month

Last but not least, once you have taken care of all of the above, you will have all the information you need to develop a near guaranteed winning strategy for next month. The worst thing you can do with any blog is to simply make things up as you go along. The more strategic you are and the more you base your strategies on the data you collect, the higher the likelihood of next month being even more successful for both your blog and your business.

Should I be blogging for my business?

Once upon a time, blogging was just for journalists, fashionistas, foodies and other people who though the world needed to hear what they had to say. Though bloggers became very influential, they remained within the ‘bloggosphere’ and few large corporations jumped on the blogging bandwagon.

Fast forward a few years however and things are very different. Thanks to the impact of social media and the influence of Google’s updated algorithms, blogging is now very much a tool for business. In fact, blogging is now so effective your company can no longer afford to ignore its power.

Google

If you’re trying to improve your company’s SEO and boost your URL up the Google rankings, incorporating a regular blog into your website is an absolute must. For a while now, Google has been favouring sites that keep their content fresh. Adding a weekly or monthly blog to your site shows Google that you’re maintaining and updating it. A blog is also an excellent chance to add more keywords to your site and fill it with information rich links and images.

Social media

Social media is an incredibly powerful - and affordable - marketing tool. Used properly, social media helps you to connect with your clients, build a personality for your company and create a loyal customer base. If you add a blog to your site, you can promote it on social media and show your customers that you’re an active participant in the network.

If your blog is interesting and relevant enough, the members of your social network will like and share it, boosting brand awareness and giving your business high quality marketing for free.

Growing your business

As well as being good for your company image, blogging is also great for business. A whopping 60% of companies who blog acquire more customers, a statistic that even the most cautious business owners can’t afford to ignore.

Building a relationship with customers

A blog is a great way to create a dialogue with customers and to build a solid business relationship. Through a blog, customers can get to know your company, your products and your services, ensuring that you’ll be the first name they think of next time they’re looking for anything you offer.

A blog also shows that you’re an authority in your area, giving existing and potential customers confidence in your abilities.

If you’re one of the many businesses that hasn’t yet embraced the blog, now’s the time to begin

How To Make Article Marketing Work For You

When it comes to article marketing, it’s important to have high quality, unique content.  Simply submitting content to article sites will not do you any favours unless it offers a new viewpoint, addresses a genuine issue or offers useful advice.

There may be links to your website from poor quality articles, but this is no good if nobody bothers to read till the end. In fact they can do you more harm than good: if the article is very badly written it will tend to reflect badly on your company. Here, then, is what to do to ensure that your article marketing has the effect you intended:

Writing Quality Articles: This is the most important rule to remember: before you start posting your content onto articles sites, test it out on your own website first and see how customers respond. If you are writing pieces that are useful to your website visitors then you can be fairly confident that potential customers who have not yet seen your website will also find them helpful. And don’t just hide them away in your ‘blog’ section (many customers won’t bother clicking on that), display them prominently on your home or product pages with catchy titles that will get people reading.

Getting Article Ideas: If you are struggling with the above because you simply can’t come up with any strong article ideas, don’t panic: this is a skill that can take a while to master. A good way of generating ideas is to do a search using the most relevant product or service keywords for you and seeing what kinds of information people are looking for. You could also look in forums related to your industry sector and find out what the big topics are at the moment or what kinds of problems people are struggling with: you can then base your article around this.

Make It A Collaboration: You may find that you don’t have the time to write all the articles yourself, and this is not a problem either. In fact, it’s good to get another perspective from time to time if you’re running low on ideas. You can encourage your employees to contribute their own articles. If they are heavily involved in marketing and selling your products then they will probably have plenty to say. You could even ask your customers if they would like to contribute content, along the lines of ‘tips on how to use these products’. Finally, if you’re really struggling to produce enough content, you can hire writers in to create it for you. Just make sure they have knowledge of the subject and can create engaging content.