One of the key successes behind many big blogs is the comments. Personally, I can’t imagine a blog without comments. It is what differentiates a good blog and an excellent blog. It is also what brings your visitors back, especially if the blogger personally replied to their replies. However, I do realize that even if you post tens and hundreds of quality posts, you may not get so many comments. Here are 7 tips to increase your comment rate.
1. Make your post welcoming!
Maybe your visitors just can’t comment on your post because they don’t see any room to do it. Try to blog in a way so that your post is a quality post, but at the same time, it is provoking the users to make a comment. Blog like it is your forum, just that when blogging, you’re the one responsible for creating all the threads that people reply to. To do that, you need to make your posts welcoming. Even a “What do you think?” line at the end of every post will significantly increase the comment rate.
2. Comment on other’s blogs!
A good portion of blogging is social networking. So what does this mean? You need to go read other’s blogs and make comments in those blogs to form some sort of a network. Usually, if you comment in these blogs, these bloggers will come visit your blog too and probably make a comment. They probably won’t only come once, assuming your content is good, but will come again and again and make more comments if possible. Good?
3. Using a SPAM protection
I have seen quite a few blogs with quite a lot of spam in the comments. Many blogging softwares have ways to deal with problems like spam. For example, WordPress comes right out of the box with a plugin called Akismet. Why not use it? From a visitor’s perspective, I wouldn’t want to make a comment when the five comments above me are spam advertisement links.
4. Moderate the comments
In addition to using a spam protection modification, you need to moderate your comments one by one too. These plugins cannot block all spam. Especially those that were commented by a human, but just sucks. Now, I’m not saying delete all these comments, but a little moderating will take care of a lot of spammy comments and increase the overall quality of your blog. Wouldn’t you want to comment in a good blog?
5. Do-follow is great!
Do-follow is an awesome plugin for WordPress. There are actually quite a lot of variations you can select from. What’s great about this? It is a small reward for those that make comments, by removing the evil “rel=”nofollow”.” If you’ve noticed many blogs that do do-following tend to have a lot of comments!
6. Reward the best
In addition with the do-follow plugin, a show top commentator’s plugin can encourage people to continously make comments. Why? Wouldn’t you make quality comments if a huge blogger said that s/he’ll give you a sitewide backlink on the sidebar in exchange? I certainly would and I’m sure most blog readers would too.
7. Threaded Comments
Threaded comments are an awesome way to get a lot iof comments coming in. It allows a user or you to comment on a specific comment. Brian’s Threaded Comments (BTC) is one of the more widely used plugins, but there are also good variations of the plugin doing the same job. Not only does this allow a healthy and an easy to follow discussion, but especially from the visitor’s perspective, it can be warming to see the blogger making personal replies. I guess that concludes to another potential returning visitor.
After writing this post, I wondered what the title of this post should be, as I think up a title the very last. In my many candidates, one of them was “Blog Like It’s Your Forum!” In fact, I mentioned the “a blog is like a forum” idea in the my first point. It truly is! You need to really begin the discussions!
So, try these tips and tell me how it works. If you’ve got more than these 7 tips, why not share it with me and the rest of the BloggersWalk readers by making a comment below? 
This is actually a question that I thought over for a very long time before I began BloggersWalk. I believe that quite a few people thinking about starting a blog might have the same debate going on in their head. Which way to go?
Today, there are a lot of blogs that deal with topics like the blogger’s life, make money online, blogging, and SEO. Also, all these topics are focused on one blog. Then, there are those blogs that deal with a very specific niche like soccer shoes, mp3 players, and cell phones. The do-it-all blog concept has its strengths and weaknesses, and the every niche a blog concept also has its strengths and weaknesses.
Personally, I believe it comes down to preferences. I decided to go with the Every Niche a Blog concept. Consequently, BloggersWalk only talks about blogging while I have a few blogs lined up right now that are very niche specific. Anyways, let’s get on and analyze some points to see which one fits you.
Do-it-all Blogs
Strengths
- Your visitors could be concentrated all into this one blog, increasing the possibility of success.
- As you’re not so niche specific, there are more opportunities to update your blog. (eg. Something Blogger John ate for dinner on some day.)
- Especially if many of the topics you are dealing with are similar, there is a greater chance for your visitors to return as your blog can be the place to get all their updates.
- You only have one blog that you have to put all your monetizing efforts into.
- If you’re short on money, you don’t have to invest as much to promote one blog compared to promoting 10.
Weaknesses
- Equally, you might lose a few visitors that could have potentially been loyal visitors, because you talk about so many other topics that are irrelevant to them.
- Again, equally, as you only have one blog to monetize it could mean a potential loss.
- You can’t really sell the blog if such a time ever comes, because what are the chances of the buyer being interested in blogging about the topics that you used to blog about? Also, you’re pretty much left with nothing after selling it off.
Every Niche a Blog
Strengths
- There are a lot of opportunities to monetize your blogs and a chance of a higher pay too as your blog is very niche specific.
- There is a greater chance that you will rack up loyal returning visitors as people like seeing blogs that talk about what they are interested in.
- You can guesstimate about how many people will read your blog post if you post it. (eg. A blog with an average of 1000 UV a day will most likely have about 1000 people reading the first post. On the other hand, with a do-it-all blog, where it is likely that a good portion of the 1000 will not be interested in the first post.)
- You can effectively link your blogs together to develop your blogs’ backlinks. This would especially be powerful if all the blogs are on different servers and are all quite popular with a good ranking.
- If you ever want to see your blog(s), you can do so without losing so much.
Weaknesses
- You need to regularly think up original topics to write about for each blog you have.
- It is also time and money consuming in the part that you will need to separately promote each and every blog.
- Your traffic will be split among your blogs most of the time, which could lead to one of them possibly failing.
In the end, it really is up to the blogger on which way is the right way to go. Again, my personal preference is the Every Niche a Blog approach, as in my opinion, it really gives me more freedom. Sure, it may take a bit more time and a bit more effort, but I feel that if you enjoy blogging, the difference pertaining to time and effort isn’t huge between a Do-it-all Blog approach and an Every Niche a Blog approach.
If you feel that I missed a strength or a weakness with any of the two approaches, feel free to drop a comment and I’ll add it in!
P.S. You probably noticed this, but there are five strengths and three weaknesses per approach. Why? I personally believe that the art of blogging as way more strengths than weaknesses, hence the difference in the number of points.
Starting today, I’m planning on giving a review on the various blogging platforms currently in the market. Although I did have quite a bit of blogging experience in the past with WordPress, I was still unsure whether WordPress was the platform to go with for BloggersWalk. This certainly isn’t because WordPress is a bad platform or anything. It simply was because of the avalibility of so many quality platforms, each and everyone had its strengths and weaknesses.
Over the next few weeks, I plan on testing an ample amount of blogging platforms on my local hard drive. Everything from famous platforms to some that may not be well known, I really do hope to cover.
If any of you know of any blogging platforms that you would like me to do a review on, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll be sure to check it out. Thanks!
Below is the list of all the bloggnig platforms I’m planning on covering. This will be updated as I go along.
- WordPress
- Blogger
- Live Journal
- TextCube
It is widely known that when you meet someone, their first impressions are what lasts the longest. This seems to be true with blogging too. In a few seconds you are either going to make that visitor a constant follower of your blog or just another person surfing by. Here are a few things that I have been trying out to start getting some regular visitors.
Anything BUT! Default
The default theme is doable regardless of the script you are using. However, the blog is like the makeup that you have on and the clothes that you are wearing. Certainly a normal person will look once again at a Vogue model than an ordinary person, at least in terms of looks. With blogs, it is similar. Any free, premium, or custom theme will be at least some sort of an improvement from the default. I personally believe that this is one of the biggest factors to consider when working on your blog’s first impression.
The Content
A log should have some sort of content. At first, all blogs lack quality content. However, with constant and regular posting, this can be overcome. In my opinion, this is the hardest part when working on your blog’s first impression. Nonetheless, it is one of the more important factors as quality articles among the junk seems to always receive recognition.
Minimizing the Advertisements
There are clearly two types of people when it comes to blogging: those that blog without making money and those that do make money. Making money is fun, exciting, and certainly an attractive aspect of blogging. However, a blog full of advertisements is unaesthetic. Flash banners screaming “You’re the 1,000,000,000th visitor! Claim your prize!” and “iPod at only $10 USD!” certainly degrades your blog’s level. Anyone who cares about their blog should avoid this. While a small degree of advertisements are okay, an excessive amount that would surely distract the user from the content of the blog should definitely be avoided.
Visibility of the Most Recent Post
I can’t stress how important this is. I am an avid blog-surfer, and read many random and sometimes even totally off-topic blogs. However, from time to time, I hit a blog and I just am overwhelmed by everything around it that I really don’t know, can’t find, or just can’t focus on the most recent post! If you want your bloggers to read your blog posts, make sure that it is there, available, and easily accessible.
Visibility of the RSS Feed Icon
This isn’t too big of an issue lately with the themes rolling out. Still, it is important to note the positioning of your RSS feed icon. It is your opportunity to make a random reader into a subscriber. Feed subscribers will probably come back sometime. A random surfer probably won’t.
These are just a few things that I’ve been focusing on lately and I have to admit, the traffic is certainly increasing. Sure, I don’t have much content yet nor is this some unique blog, as yes, it is yet another blog about blogging. Nonetheless, these little techniques seem to be clicking correctly for me at least.
Okay, so after the first BloggersWalk introduction post I have yet to post another post. It certainly is not a lack of enthusiasm for the project and nor is it because I totally forgot about it. I was just too busy with my summer work and while I constantly thought that I should post my first quality post, I never had the chance. So, to push myself, I decided to make a schedule.
From today on, BloggersWalk will publish a quality blog post every Tuesday and Friday. It is possible that I will post even more whenever time permits, but these are the two days that I will for sure write up a new content.
Now, this does not mean that you should only check BloggersWalk every Tuesday and Friday. Infact, you should check everyday! As I said, I will try to post more than twice a week, but for now, I will at least get two posts up a week.
So, what does that mean? The first blog-related, the road to becoming a professional blogger-type of post will come tomorrow, June 24, 2008!
Welcome to BloggersWalk!
My name is Gnus (alias really…) and since January 1, 2003, I’ve been actively engaged in the making, promoting, and selling of websites, domains, design services, and a few other “Internet” activities. Throughout my many experiences, one of the things that I thought would be worthwhile and a learning experience was blogging.
In mid-June of 2006, I really began to dig into what blogging was all about, by starting a Zune fansite based on WordPress. Ever since, I’ve sold the Zune blog and featured as a part-time blogger for many tech blogs, sports blogs, and game blogs. However, missing my enjoyable times as a Zune fan-blog administrator, since early 2008, I began to think of what I could blog about.
After months of thinking and seeing what niche I could try out I still couldn’t find an answer. Then, I realized that blogging itself is what I was interested in. After my high-school graduation in early June 2008, I decided that I should create a blog dedicated to blogging. Plus, maybe I thought that maybe I should become a professional blogger too, if a job even existed!
That is what you see here now. BloggersWalk. A blog dedicated to the art of blogging. I plan on running my own personal blog dedicated to all my various and extreme hobbies, but I wanted to keep the blogging section at a separate zone; BloggersWalk is that place, my little abode where I learn what blogging is what becoming a professional blogger really means.
I am still not an expert in blogging. However, my current goal is to carry this blog through until my next graduation four years later. Everything I learn regarding designing a blog design to promoting blogs and writing good content for it, I will share here in BloggersWalk. It will certainly not be an easy path the next four years and I do know that from time to time I will be tempted to quit. Nonetheless, I hope to reach my goal.
Will you join me in my new, exciting journey?
Again, welcome to BloggersWalk. I hope that you learn a lot from my stories as I start a journey to becoming a professional blogger. Please leave a comment with a link to your blog too, as I can’t wait to share and learn what you have in store for me too.
Thank you.
Static is a teen blogger who runs the blog, 
