Inspiring Top Comments

Comments are the potent web 2.0 elixir of any blog, the life blood of the site, coursing through its interwebs, the externalised expre….enough, already!

Seriously, comments are what most blogs are all about, the sharing of thoughts and ideas inspired by the blogger’s words. Sometimes the conversation rages and flamewars as violent as those we used to see on Usenet in the good-old days emerge, other times you can almost hear the cobwebs rustling in the breeze it’s so quiet. So, what to do on days when it seems no one has anything to say?

I’ve written a couple of posts about how to encourage your readers to contribute more comments to a blog, sharing a little link luv for those visitors who have blogs and sites of their own through plugins, such as Top Commentators and Comment Luv help. The former effectively gives regular contributors a text link on the site, while the latter automatically pulls in the latest post title from their blog feed. There are a few less serious ways to get more comments. But, there’s also a tried and tested method that is rarely mentioned and it involves a setting or plugin that I recommend all bloggers enable or install if they can: Subscribe to comments.

This option gives your readers the chance to, obviously, subscribe to comments. When a new comment appears on a post they will get an email alerting them to the fact. A plugin for Wordpress does the job, while Blogspot bloggers have to simply enable the option in their blog settings.

So, how does this get you new comments? Well, by judiciously commenting on your older posts that have numerous comment subscribers you can fire up a follow-on conversation. Perhaps you could ask a new question or highlight recent development on the subject, for instance. Those who subscribe will be alerted to your new comment and hopefully be inspired to pitch in with their own response, newer visitors and those who had not previously commented on the post will likely join the conversation.

To get the most benefit from this tip, you need to know which earlier posts had the most comment subscribers, but it can work well even if you don’t. In Wordpress, however, finding the most subscribed posts, is a simple matter of heading to your blog admin page, clicking “Manage” and then choosing “Subscriptions”. You’ll see a list of all subscribers, but below that is the interesting bit, a list of Top Subscribed Posts.

Next, use a related-news widget such as Sphere or Zemanta to check out recent happenings in the same field as the top few posts and use this new information as the basis of a follow-up comment of your own. Your previous commentators will receive the alert, and hopefully head back to your earlier post with new thoughts and insights, adding a little drop of that wonderful web 2.0 elixir to your site.