Get More Comments on Your Blog

June 21st, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 14 Comments

Regular readers will know all about Sciencetext’s Top Commentators Slot. Comment on several posts and the link to which you assign your name in commenting will be promoted to the homepage, top right, assuming you have commented more than your fellow readers.

This kind of promotion can boost overall comment numbers on any blog, and more comments as bloggers know, means more interaction with the readers, and that can only be a good thing. Dialog beats monologue any day.

But, there is a killer tip to get more comments on your blog that you will probably never see mentioned on the more mainstream tips and tricks sites, only here on Sciencetext will we reveal such a sneaky tweak.

So, what is it?

Well, that killer tip is to plant a deliberate error in your post. Something subtle, probably trivial, certainly not controversial. You will not believe how many pedants will come running to correct your slip, it is literally unbelievable.

You can put together all kinds of cogent arguments, put forward a valid hypothesis in the clearest terms, but if you make a minor grammatical slip or do a unit conversion that’s out of kilter you will kickstart a comment flood. Having said that, of course, the problem with such a tip is that it could make you look stupid, even if you declare that the mistake was deliberate later in the comment thread, it could turn off some of your readers who may think you’re simply dumb to make such an obvious mistake. Of course, you could publish a post entitled “Get More Comments on Your Blog” as a kind of red herring to cover all mistakes in every subsequent post, but I still think most blog readers, being rather intelligent creatures, will see right through you? Wot do you think?

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14 responses so far ↓

Hsien Lei // Jun 21, 2007 at 4:09 pm

“most blog readers, being rather intelligent creatures”

You assume a lot!!
rob // Jun 21, 2007 at 5:59 pm

Ha! Yeah, one things for sure in this Internet world, pedants love an error.

Could get kinda tiring though , plus you might also get known as the blogger who keeps getting it wrong
John Webber // Jul 31, 2007 at 2:37 pm

“Wot do you think?”

The correct spelling is “What”.
David Bradley // Jul 31, 2007 at 5:56 pm

Yep, John, I know. I was attempting retro kitchy old-skool humor
John Webber // Jul 31, 2007 at 6:47 pm

Sorry David I was trying to make a joke
David Bradley // Aug 1, 2007 at 8:00 am

No problem John…maybe it’s ill-advised of me to make silly jokes like that as probably some readers will see it as lame or a faux attempt to appear more youthful while others may just I assume I cannot spel
Svetoslav // Aug 11, 2007 at 6:54 pm

Hi,
everyone can make a grammatical error, but if you are showing a problem and its solution later on, and you have several mistakes people will feel lied and the respect towards you will decrease.

by the way, please, fix the CSS problem because the page does not look very well and I write in 50px textarea which is not very good as well.

Svetoslav
David Bradley // Aug 20, 2007 at 1:20 pm

Svetoslav, the idea was actually a joke. I wouldn’t advise anyone to deliberately include mistakes in a post just to get comments. What would be the point? To what CSS are you referring, by the way, the Sciencetext looks fine in all the browsers in which I tested it. The comments box is certainly not just 50px across, if that’s what you mean. What browser do you use?

db
Svetoslav // Aug 20, 2007 at 1:29 pm

I tried Firefox 2.0.0.6 did you try posting a comment as user ?
David Bradley // Aug 20, 2007 at 3:15 pm

Yep, just logged out and tested on 2.0.0.6 and it looks fine, do you want to email me a screengrab of the problem you’re facing? What resolution is your screen? What font size are you set to in the browser?
Svetoslav // Aug 20, 2007 at 4:13 pm

By the way this was the last time I made a post. At this moment it seems OK.
Cache stuff may be…
David Bradley // Aug 20, 2007 at 6:49 pm

Svetoslav, it could’ve been a caching issue, the comment form worked perfectly for me on a test machine with that version of Firefox and indeed all the other browsers I tried. Perhaps you hit a blip and it didn’t fully call the CSS for whatever reason before you started typing…we’ll probably never know.
Ardegas // May 13, 2009 at 12:19 am

How about dumbing down your posts?

Sometimes I suspect my writing style is too complicated for some people.
David Bradley // May 13, 2009 at 7:48 am

Dumbing down my posts…? Hmmmm… Am I writing at too high a level, do you think? What level should I adopt?