Comments are essential to a blog. It can be used to determine a blog’s quality. Without comments, there won’t be any discussion going on on your blog. However, a study shows that most of the blog visitors don’t comment.

And so, here are 11 tips on how to get more comments on your blog.

1. Comment on other people’s blogs

Especially small blogs. Most bloggers visit their commentators’ websites, so if you comment a lot, the bloggers might return the favor and comment on your blog too.

But remember to leave quality comments too! Click here for more tips on commenting on other blogs.

2. Recommend people in your blog posts

I’ve seen many blog posts like “10 Influential Bloggers of 2010” and most of the people, who know that they are recommended, thanked the author of the post for putting them on the list.

So, the bigger the list, the more comments you get! But don’t forget to tell them that they are on the list, though.

3. Write question blog posts

Question blog posts, like this one, which is recently published on Problogger, tend to generate tons of quality replies. It is because the reader probably knows the answer and wants to contribute.

4. Post less frequently

If you post less frequently, the latest blog post stays on top of the blog for some time, which makes time for more commentators to comment.

But if you post too frequently, the post will be pushed down and it won’t have much exposure. It also gives your readers information overload.

5. Network with more bloggers

Bloggers visit their friends’ blogs quite often and sometimes they comment, so if you make lots of blogger friends, more people might comment on your blog.

6. Reward your commentators

If you reward your commentators, they might comment again on your blog because they like your present.

One way to reward your commentators is to install the “Top Commentators Plugin” to show off your most frequent commentators and give them a dofollow link.

Another way is to post their comments on your posts if they are good.

7. I comment for you, you comment for me

i.e. Trade comments

Ask your friends to trade comments, which simply means commentating on each others’ blogs.

8. Reply to your commentators

If you reply to your commentators, they will feel noticed and might reply and comment again.

But if you don’t, they might feel neglected.

In other words, do your best to reply to every comment on your blog!

9. Write quality posts

If you write quality posts, it will bring in more traffic. And more traffic means more people will comment. But be sure to also promote your quality posts too!

10. Ask them to!

If all else fails, simply follow the old saying, ask and you shall receive. So, ask your friends to comment (by instant messaging them, DMing them on twitter, or sending a ‘please comment’ update on facebook), and they most probably will.

11. Ask your readers to add more to the post

This is somewhat similar to the point above. Ask your readers to add another point to your post, and if the answers are good, add them to the post!

So, uhh, do you know of another way to get more comments on your blog? If so, please comment and I add your answer here if I like it .

More great tips from commentators below

Simon Liew

Good points! I like no.7 “I comment for you, you comment for me” . I would like to add another point, “Never ever doing SPAM on your friend’s Blog”. I’d come across and felt frustrated with less visitor, more visitor means getting chances of comments will increase.

Gerald Weber

Also using a plugin like Comment Luv May encourage readers to comment because they will get a anchor text rich link back to their blog from one of their recent posts. This will not only encourage then to comment but also to comment more often or on future posts.

One more… if your blog is “do follow” state that it is do follow on your blog. To many bloggers this is an additional benefit since their link will get credit or “link juice” when the search engines follow the link.

Tinh

Nice ones but I do not totally agree with you on this point “Post less frequently”. Yes, it will keep the latest post at the top of the blog and commentators have more time to comment but you will loose comments from other returning readers. So, post more frequently at reasonable level is better

@Katjaib

Good suggestions from you and other commentators. Instead of “post less often”, why not include a mention & link to one of your related, earlier posts to get more readers/comments? Something I’ve just started doing that seems to be working. (But did I do it in my latest post? No! LOL)
And yes! Be generous in supporting others. Good karma.

EVo

This is a pretty good post. ‘post less often’ is a good point, which I know and hear from other people to be effective, especially when it’s a paid post and the blogger wants more exposure.

I’m gona share a personal experience on a blog that I read. Apparently she has hundreds and nearing thousands of readers, daily. But you’ll see that she gets close to zero comments. Surprising? Not really, cause she repeats the same topic over and over again..so people actually visit her blog for the wrong reasons. She probably will be getting hate mail soon enough lol.

Hi there. Last week, I was quite busy with the Once Upon a Twice online YouTube recitation contest.

Once Upon a Twice is a creative Jabberwocky-like poem written by Denise Doyen. The book tells a story of a young and adventurous but naive mousling called Jam, who gone through a thrilling experience of life.

So one day, I received an email from the author who got to know me through my action poems on Youtube. She invited me to join the contest, which I happily agreed.

Because the poem was so creative, I was motivated to compose music and songs to the poem too. It’s my first time composing a song by the way, and I really enjoyed the process!

Due to some busy events, I almost couldn’t enter the contest, which ends on 10th October 2009.

Luckily, my mom encouraged me and I was able to act out and upload the video at 3:30 pm 10th October 2009, Pacific Time.

So, here is the video of me reciting Once Upon a Twice below. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the poem and so, my performance too:

Update (12 October 2009): Huray! I have been just informed that I am the international winner of the contest. Thank you very much to the author who has created such a wonderful poem. I really enjoyed creating the performance!

Twitter, as we all know, is a very popular and growing social media site. It only started in 2006 but it is very popular now (You should really try it out if you haven’t!).

So if you are an active twitter user, here are 10 ways to improve your twitter, most of which you hadn’t done.

1. Block auto DMs and enable email notifications for DMs

In case you didn’t know, DMs are Direct Messages. And they can be automated. So whenever you follow a person who has automated DMs enabled, you get a “Welcome” DM from them, which isn’t genuine.

So, why not block it? If you do so, your twitter inbox would be much cleaner. You would only receive genuine DMs. Here are the steps to block ‘em.

1)  Log in to Twitter.
2)  Follow @OptMeOut.
3)  Wait for @OptMeOut to follow you back. @OptMeOut will send you a DM to tell you it has followed you.
4)  Then send a DM to @OptMeOut. (You can write whatever you want in the DM, it does not matter.)
5)  After sending the DM, unfollow @OptMeOut. (This way your opting out remains private since you won’t be in the list of @OptMeOut’s followers. We will unfollow you as well.)

Must be done in that order.

For more information of opting out of auto-DMs, click here.

And now that you have gotten rid of all the spam, you can enable email notifications now.

Now you will be notified every time a person sends you a genuine, personal direct message, via email .

2. Share your replies with others

If you send out a reply starting with ‘@username’, a big bunch of people is not going to see that reply, unless they are following you and the person to whom you are replying.

So if you think your reply is useful, go add something before ‘@username’ like

‘Hey @username I think it looks brilliant! http://bit.ly/2t6XtY”

or with a full stop.

“.@username I think it is amazing! http://bit.ly/2t6XtY”

3. Get a custom twitter background

A custom twitter background is cool and pretty (Much, much better than the default one). It also gives your profile visitors some information about you. Plus, it gives more evidence that you are a human and not another bot, which most people don’t like to follow.

Here is my example of a twitter background.

Click here for 10 websites to look for stunning (and free) twitter backgrounds.

4. At least, tweak the colors

If you don’t think you have the time to create a twitter background, you should at least tweak some of your twitter profile’s colors. Default twitter colors are just too…default.

Go to Settings >> Design >> Change Design Colors to do that.

5. Subscribe to a twitterer

Well, sometimes it’s easy to miss tweets on twitter when you are away. If you don’t want to miss tweets from a particular person, subscribe to their twitter feed using an RSS reader.

Of course, subscribe to a person (so that it won’t mess your RSS reader up) whose updates are interesting, useful, or important, like @spam, or even celebrities.

To do this, click on the RSS icon (the orange thingy) at the sidebar of a twitter profile and paste that link into your RSS reader.

6. Create a twitter landing page

When you click the homepage link on a twitter profile, you go to the person’s website. Have you ever thought of creating a twitter landing page specified for visitors from twitter?

On the landing page, you can introduce yourself, your best blog posts, etc.

My example of a twitter landing page.

7. Capitalize your twitter username (i.e. twitter handle)

We’ll use John Yankee as an example.

http://twitter.com/johnyankee –> http://twitter.com/JohnYankee

Get the idea? It makes your name looks less confusing and easier to read.

To do that, go your twitter settings and capitalize the first letters of your name. And…you’re done!

Don’t worry, twitter profile addresses are not case sensitive so you can reach http://twitter.com/JohnYankee if you type http://twitter.com/johnyankee.

8. Don’t just tweet about what you are doing!

Sometimes people are not very interested to know what you are doing.

So, tweet other stuff, like

1. Links
2. Quotes
3. Facts
4. Jokes
5. Puns
6. News

Here are 16 types to tweets to tweet.

9. Come on, tweet something personal!

If you tweet a lot of  links and quotes and facts and stuff, you should really tweet something personal; something interesting about your life. If it is not interesting, make it interesting.

Tweeting personal tweets help your followers to get to know you and your personality better. It also helps to prove that you are a real person and not a robot.

10. Use twitter like Yahoo! Answers

(Credits to @the_gman for this point)
Twitter is an interactive tool so it is important to occasionally tweet some questions for your followers to answer. This shows to your followers that you want to interact with them and they will probably answer your question.

Here are some tips when asking questions

1. Use it as a research tool.
2. Sometimes twitter is better than Google in helping you solve your problems. Example.
3. Don’t ask questions that are impossible to answer, or they won’t be answered at all.
4. Ask questions that are easy to answer to generate more replies.
5. Ask questions when your loyal followers are most active.

And, not only you should ask questions, you should answer questions and help people solve their problems too, which builds friendship.

_____________

So those are my 10 ways to improve your twitter. If you liked this post, please feel free to share it with your twitter buddies.

Do you know of any other ways to improve one’s twitter? Please feel free to share them in the comments .

Happy tweeting!

I have recently guest posted an article on 15 ways to get your blog comments noticed on http://sem-group.net. I hope you’ll enjoy it!

It’s my 3rd guest post so far. I’m looking to writing more guest posts soon!

To view it, click here => 15 ways to get your blog comments noticed. I hope you’ll enjoy my guest post!

The comments will be closed below. If you’ve got a comment, you can post it there.

Today (09/09/09), I am enlisted in the Malaysia Book of Records (MBR) as the youngest published poet in Malaysia. I feel very honored to be enlisted in MBR.

I want to thank MBR for organizing this event, and Dato’ Danny Ooi for founding MBR. They have personal achievement records and group event records. The personal achievement records help encourage the person while the group records help to build the spirit of teamwork. I am very proud to be a Malaysian.

I am also very grateful to my mother and father for supporting my hobby and lifting it into the professional level.

First, Azrene, the Head of Research in MBR, emailed me to ask me to join the Malaysia Book of Records on July 13 after my appearance with the Prime Minister on the press on 11 July.

Then, they had to confirm that I am the youngest poet by checking the bookstores for poetry books that were written by kids no older than 9. None were found.

On 5 September, I was invited to their office and they asked me to write a funny poem based on the topics they chose on the spot. So, here is the poem (I took one hour to finish it):

My Kitty’s Adventure

My cat was bored of me because
I hug him night and day.
He chose to take a small break
and go for a holiday.

He jumped into my toy plane.
He doesn’t want to stay.
He buckled up his seatbelt
and he zoomed out of the way.

With great determination,
he went out my open door.
He flew into the big blue skies.
He just wants to explore

But there was a big thunderstorm.
The plane was struck by lightning.
My cat was gonna crash! Oh no!
I’m sure that it was frightening.

Good thing he knows how to swim for
he crashed into a river.
Bad thing it was the Angel Falls!
He then began to shiver.

He fell about 3,000 feet from
that high waterfall.
He fell onto a monkey that
thought my cat was a ball.

And with his strength, he threw my kitty
up into the sky.
I wish that I was him because I
always want to fly.

At that time, I was gazing at some
pretty clouds of red.
Then I saw my kitty flying.
Then it landed on my head!

“It’s alright my darling!” I said.
I was really so delighted!
”Meow…….” he gladly sighed as
we are reunited.

After finishing, I also acted out the poem on the spot in front of the founder of MBR, Dato’ Danny Ooi. After that, my mother chose this date (09/09/09) to receive the record certificate.

My mother chose 09/09/09 because number 9 in Chinese culture means ‘forever’.. After receiving the certificate, then my mother realized this date was really God-given, because my Chinese name is Teh You Heng. “You” means protection from God. “Heng” means forever.

Here are some photos from the event. I want to thank Simon Liew (A kind friend I met online) for helping me take all these nice photos (Yes, all photos here are taken by him).

MBR Founder Dato’ Danny Ooi presenting me my record certificate

Me performing my poem, “The Fly”, using the music and sound effects I composed on keyboard.

Me acting out my poem, “My Dad’s Obsessed With Elephants”.

Me with Simon Liew, the kind guy who helped me take all these photos.

Family photo.

 
My brother, Rockson, was invited to dance to Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal”, too.

Holding a personal record in the Malaysia Book of Records has certainly encouraged me to become a better person each day.

I hope you enjoyed this post!

Cheers!