Painful criticism more useful than the mere comments: "great post", "I like your blog", etc..
Why?
A more sepontan feedback will occur, and more technical. This is a good beginning for a relationship between the blog. Your explanation will be very important and vital.
There's no better relationship than a relationship of mutual honest and open, this applies to all things, also the relationship between blogs. Critics tell us about our shortcomings and weaknesses, it becomes very constructive if we intend to improve ourselves.
Source : DailyBlogTips, Guest Post by Srikanth AD
Bloggers love to have comments on their blogs. It builds social proof, enriches the content, fosters community and so on. Here are six plugins that you can use to boost the number of comments on your blog and make the commenting process more efficient.
Replying to comments from your readers will make them come back in the future, because they will know that your care for them.
The “Better Comments Manager” plugin allows you to reply to the comments right from the Admin panel. In the absence of this plug-in, you have to visit the post individually and reply to the comment which is time consuming and tedious if you have tons of comments to reply.
By installing this plug-in in your WordPress blog your readers can get email notifications about the further comments on the post. When a reader comments in a post and checks the box to get E-mail notifications, it helps him to stay in touch with the comments and encourages him to come back to your blog and stay engaged in the discussion.
This helps to add more value to your post as more and more commenter’s exchange their ideas and views on the post.
This plugin for WordPress allows the readers to reply to a specific comment, making it easier to follow the discussion. The plugin should also be compatible with most WordPress themes around, and installation is not that difficult.
This is one another cool WordPress plugin to consider if you are looking to get more comments and visits to your WordPress blog. This plug-in encourages your readers to actively participate in the discussion and it allows them to rate a comment posted with simple thumbs up or down buttons.
They can also leave active replies to the comments or start a new comment. Commenters can also subscribe to the replies and new comments such that they get email notification when a reply to their comment is received or any new comment is added to the post.
This plugin for WordPress also allows you to instantly reply to comments right from the admin panel.
The interesting feature of this plug-in is that it supports threaded comments, and if you have set to receive email notification, when a new comment is posted you can see a direct reply link to the comment in the email.
This is a great tool to interact with the commenters of your blog posts. By using this plugin you can send email to selected commenters, perhaps thanking their for their comments or asking their opinions on a related issue.
Reza asks:
When I launched the first post on my blog, there was no one visiting it and, so it was difficult to get comments. Now if people visit my blog and don’t see any comments, they will think it sucks. How do I solve this problem?
This looks like a chicken-egg conundrum huh? When you have a new blog, you won’t get comments because you don’t have visitors. But you will also not get visitors because you have no comments (and thus no social proof).
Luckily for new bloggers this is not a real conundrum, it just looks like one. New visitors will certainly take a look at the number of comments on your blog to gauge its credibility, but this is just one of the factors they will take into consideration.
It is not like visitors will run away as soon as they see “0 Comments” on all your posts. Well, some might, but definitely not the majority.
This means that the average visitor will give you the benefit of the doubt, and he will probably at least check your headlines and click to read one post.
If you have outstanding content, therefore, you should be able to start attracting new readers even with a very low number of comments on the blog, and over time some of these new readers will start commenting, building your social proof.
That being said, it would be easier to attract readers if you could display some social proof from day one. It is hard, but possible. Here are three tactics that you can use for this purpose:
1. Friend and Family. If you want to get some comments on your very first posts, you will inevitably need to tap into your offline network, and usually this will translate into friends and family. Just ask them to visit the blog and to leave a meaningful comment on one of your posts.
2. Blogging Partners. There are probably thousands of bloggers out there who are exactly in your same situation. They are starting a blog and don’t have readers yet to leave comments. Why not approach them and propose a partnership, where you take the time to read and comment on their posts and vice-versa? Apart form building your social proof, this will also foster your online network.
3. Killer Articles. If you write a killer article (i.e. an article that is long, structured and that packs a huge amount of value for potential readers) and promote it on social media, you will certainly get some comments, if not dozens of them. This will give you a boost in credibility, and there is always the chance that some of those social media visitors will become loyal readers and start commenting on your other posts too.Your task today is another writing oriented challenge and is all about expressing an opinion.
There are many factors that set great bloggers apart from the rest but one that I’ve seen continually cropping up over the last few years of interacting with successful bloggers is that they often have and are not afraid to express strong opinions.
While other bloggers in their niche ‘report’ news it is those who express opinions about the news and current events in their industry that tend to be the blogs that get linked to by others, that generate more comments and that people look to as thought leaders in a niche.
Your task today is to write a blog post that expresses an opinion.
This might seem easier for some niches/topics than others but I think it probably applies to most of us.
Your post need not be a highly emotional one that rants and raves about your topic - to express your opinion all you need to do is add your own thoughts and feelings about the topic you’re covering.
You probably won’t find it suitable to share opinions on every post (although on some blogs this may be appropriate) - but when you regularly add your opinion on your blog you’ll find that it can have a significant impact.
Expressing opinions on your blog is like adding seasoning to food. Without it your blog could end up being quite bland and blend into the crowd. However when you add it you will find that it helps to give your blog unique flavor.
Your task today is to write a blog post that expresses an opinion about something related to your blog topic. Once you’ve written it come back, share a link to it and tell us about the experience.
“Leave comments on other blogs.”
If there’s one piece of advice for building traffic to a blog that is given to new bloggers more than any other it is about leaving comments on other blogs.
Today your task in the 31 Days to Build a Better blog is to do just that - spend 10-15 minutes reading and interacting on other blogs on your topic (or surrounding topics).
It should go without saying but just having moderated the comments on my own blogs I suspect it needs to be said a day - DON’T BE A COMMENT SPAMMER!
More than that - DON’T LOOK LIKE A COMMENT SPAMMER!
I add that second warning because I come across a lot of bloggers who try to leave comments on other blogs in a way that they think is genuine - but that looks very spammy. Their comments more often than not get them on blacklists of comment spam filters.
The rule of thumb that I advise when leaving comments on other people’s blogs is simple - add value.
A comment that simply says ‘great post’ and that then has a link signature back to your own blog adds little if any value to the blog. It looks spammy. The only visitors you’ll get back to your blog are people wanting to know who the spammer is!
Comments are Mini Resumes - Every comment you leave is like a mini resume for you and your blog (read more about that in the last point of Lorelle’s post on comments here).
Comments can Hurt Your Brand - On the flip side - every comment you write can potentially hurt your reputation and brand as a blogger. Here are 10 Ways that comments can actually do more harm than good to the brand of your blog.
Further Reading: I wrote a comment back in 2007 (which I think is still relevant today) with 11 Tips for Getting Your Comments Noticed on a Popular Blog.
Your task today is to find blogs on a similar or related topic to yours and to spend 10-15 minutes interacting on them in a genuine and useful way. Let us know how you go below (with a comment of course)!