Get People Talking on Your Blog in Three Easy Steps

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Blogging is not all about standing on your ‘cyber soap box’ sprouting forth words of wisdom. Most successful blogs promote and facilitate high levels of interaction. I’m going to tell you how to tweak your approach so you can easily get the same results.

Having an interactive blog is especially pertinent if you own a network marketing Internet business since the skill you must learn to be best at, is networking with others.

Setting your blog up as an interactive platform is an ideal way for you to learn and practice this skill on your turf.

Your aim should be to interact with your readers and if possible for your readers to interact with each other.

The reason why you want this to be clearly visible to visitors is because it will demonstrate that your blog is a popular and active meeting place.

It’s a fact that we all want to be associated with successful endeavors, so when people perceive that your blog is an important place to contribute, more will be motivated to get involved which is exactly the viral outcome you want.

More visitors to your blog must always be a top priority for obvious reasons.

One of the easiest ways to facilitate interaction is by encouraging readers to comment on your posts.

You might already be doing this and be getting a fair number of comments, but I want to encourage you to take this a step further and get more of a conversation going.

In other words right now your readers are probably commenting and you are replying but that’s usually where it ends.

Not much of a conversation is it?

Is it possible to extend what you’re already doing so that people spend more time commenting back and forth in the comments section?

I think so and here’s how:

Step 1:  Give Them a Reason to Converse

Think about usual conversations between people. The ones that continue effortlessly do so because there’s enough meaty interest to keep everyone going.

If you’re writing dull, uninteresting posts there’s no real reason for any conversation to begin.

So even if you’re writing about a well worn topic try and come at it from a different angle.

If you can be genuinely controversial or at least present a controversially held opinion about something, this will also frequently lead others to want to voice their opinions.

Don’t however try to be controversial for the sake of it. Aim to write quality interesting content, infused with your genuine values and opinions.

Step 2:  Initiate  the Conversation With Questions

You may have heard in relation to networking that the person asking the questions is in control of the conversation.

Since it’s your blog, assume the position and lead the conversation by asking probing questions during and at the end of your post.

It’s not enough to simply ask people to leave a comment, although if your post is  ”hot” enough, they probably will.

Some people need more guidance and asking the right questions will get more people writing and sharing their viewpoints.

Once again put some thought into your questions. If they are boring and just questions for the sake of questions, people will feel little need to answer them.

Think of open ended questions that stimulate thought and illicit responses related to what you have written about.

Step 3:  Move the Conversation Along

This step is critical, especially the latter part of it, which can only occur if the above two steps have been completed properly.

Hopefully you will now have stimulated some response and people will have left comments to your post.

Firstly make sure that you reply to all comments as soon as you can so that the topic is still uppermost in people’s minds.

Also make sure that you have enabled threaded (nested) comments in the discussion settings in your admin area.

This means that comments will fall under each other as they are made and make it much easier for readers to follow.

Some blog themes require a plugin to facilitate this.  WP Thread Comment is a good option to use.

A lot of bloggers get to this point and then things bomb out and here’s why.

You reply but the person who left the comment never gets to read what your or anybody else’s responses were.

We’re all busy and once we have commented on posts we generally forget or just don’t have the time to go back and see what the reply was.

Sometimes I do want to know what the blogger said and I will make an effort to go back and read their comments but most times I don’t. What a pity.

To keep the conversation going you must do two things – firstly use a plugin that will automatically send your readers who have commented, an email, in which their comment and your reply will be relayed to them.

Now you are telling them what you said without them having to go back and look themselves.

Some people have an email sent that just acknowledges that a comment was left. I see no point in this. You want them to know what you said in your reply.

I use a simple and very effective plugin to take care of this called, Comment Reply Notification

More importantly however is what you say in your reply.

If you want the conversation to continue, read what they have written and ask another question if possible. Most times people will go back and answer your question again.

You can also refer to someone else’s comment if you think it’s pertinent, in which case they will have to go back to the post to read that comment, so it’s another way of getting them back to the same discussion.

The Comment Reply Notifcation plugin makes this all easy however as one can just click on the actual post from within the email sent.

How long the conversation continues will depend on the topic, questions asked and whether the reader participates, but at least you will have done more to encourage further interaction this way.

Why do you think it’s worthwhile or not to stimulate conversation on your blog? Do you already have conversation happening?  What do you do to make this happen?

Be Happy!

Post Image: B S K