Ask HN: How do you get more comments on a blog?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1417112

by crouton • 16 years ago

20 37 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

My blog has been getting around 3k hits per day average lately. However, very rarely do people comment. It's nice to have the traffic but wondering what really drives folks to leave a comment on a blog.

jgrahamc• 16 years ago

You might just need more traffic. If you take a look at this story on my blog about sleeping on long flights (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/how-to-sleep-on-long-haul-flight...) you'll see that it has 14 comments. A quick look in Google Analytics says that it had 22,994 page views. So one comment per 1,600 page views.

Another blog post, about messing around with an Ikea train set (http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/more-fun-with-toys-ikea-lill...) received 26 comments and has 56,373 pages views. So one comment per 2,200 page views.

One last example about squaring numbers in your head (http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-i...) has 15 comments and 21,380 page views. One comment every 1,400 page views.

So, more traffic helps. What's the URL of your blog?

petewarden• 16 years ago

I get about 1 comment and 1100 page views a day, which is a similar ratio. Thanks to an Intense Debate/Feedburner bug (FB adds ?=... to the end of the article link in the RSS and ID treats it as a different page for comments) I've noticed I actually get a lot of my comments from my 1600ish subscribers though.

angilly• 16 years ago

FWIW, I've had posts w/ 4k pageviews get 15 comments and posts with 3k pageviews get no comments.

bdickason2• 16 years ago

The only reasons I comment on a blog: 1) I am hoping for a response from the author. Usually this happens when it's a 'celebrity' ala Fred Wilson from AVC or something along those lines.

2) I feel bad for the guy not having any comments and try to help him out.

Unfortunately there's a paradox online where people link from sites like HN then come back to the community they trust to comment. Once you have enough people reading your blog that feel passionate about it (not just browse + leave), start adding some calls to action at the bottom. Encourage people to share their own stories and be very specific.

Examples (based on your username): 1) "Have you been food poisoned by croutons? Tell us about it in the comments!"

2) "Do you have a favorite salad dressing? Let us know!"

The first part should always be a question that probes for a personal story. Everyone has their own opinion/story about something, you want to draw it out of them! The second part should be a very positive 'we want to hear from you' type vibe and always include a link to the comments.

Here's a (shameless plug) example from my blog: http://getmochi.com/blog/fighting-the-gulf-oil-spill-one-hai...

"Do you work with a charity in your salon? Leave a comment with your best “feel good” story!"

Obviously this is targeted at salon owners and not HN readers. My first sentence draws them in with a 'does this apply to you?' The second sentence encourages a comment and gives a solid idea of WHAT to comment about. This is super important because people need to be told what to do, especially when commenting. Very few people will respond to a 'leave us a comment' post.

mdolon• 16 years ago

I've enabled the Backtype Connect WordPress plugin until I get more comments on my blog - the plugin pulls conversations from social media sites and Twitter mentions and posts them as comments. This makes it seem like posts have a ton of comments when in reality, they only have a handful. It's a slightly deceptive but I think the psychological effect the reader has is worth it (but I could be wrong).

bdickason2• 16 years ago

Personally I find that when I see twitter posts like "RT" and links to the post.. it influences me to NOT comment because I know those people aren't going to talk back.

crouton2• 16 years ago

Good point about the traffic. I was going based on daily traffic not on total traffic to that specific post. My blog is a special interest photo blog so that might also have something to do with it. Perhaps because we decided to have little commentary, and focus on the photos, the reader also feels no commentary is necessary.

corin_4• 16 years ago

On my perosnal blog I actually chose not to have any comments system, partly because I'm using Jekyll, a static site generator, and I chose loading time over encorporating a PHP or JS comments system, and partly also because, if someone has interesting enough to say, they can take the effort to let me know on twitter/email.

I work for a publishing company, however, and I've found that the single biggest impact on comments, site traffic excluded, is the features your comments system offers.

Of our eight websites, the site with the best rate of comments is also the one with the most sophisticated comments system. Taking last week's statistics as an example, it averaged one comment for every 30 page views, which is one comment for every five site visits. It actually saw slightly more comments than unique visitors. That's a pretty impressive achievement in my eyes, and while not the whole story, it is thanks largely to the way commenting works.

The comments system on that site is a custom solution, created with AJAX/PHP, which dynamicly loads comments on page load. Among the best features are:

- unread comments highlighted a specific colour (on our site, based on user accounts, could be based on IPs easily)

- article lists / home page / etc shows comment numbers next to article links, including number of unread comments for the specific user viewing it

- a panel showing the ten items most recently commented on

- users can reply to a specific comment, this notifies the user they reply to

On this site, the key goals of the comments system are to inrease user experience for regular visitors to the site, and to drive traffic, however for smaller sites such as personal blogs, it could also help in other ways. I for one never comment on personal blogs because I know I'll forget to check for replies - why not allow email subscription for less-frequent readers, or specific notification of a reply directly to a comment a user left?

That's my biggest tip then: think in terms of "how can I make the commenting system more efficient, usably and enjoyable for my users?" - but of course, there are many other considerations, such as writing content that is more likely to inspire user discussion and feedback.

SlyShy• 16 years ago

Get people to know to comment. Right now you are falling prey to the empty restaurant effect. There's a cognitive barrier to be the first/only person to comment on a site that is perceived to be empty. So have some friends of yours comment as a favor to you, and other people will start. This little site that I run (http://impishidea.com/) has only somewhat higher traffic than you currently, but gets a lot more comments. The "8 new comments today." counter was a big help, because people were able to see evidence of new comments.

bretthoerner3• 16 years ago

Disclaimer: I work at DISQUS.

Aside from content and traffic, it's important to lower the barrier for people that may want to comment. I'm not sure what you're using now, but nobody wants to make an account, and people generally like being e-mailed if someone replies to them. DISQUS is a very easy win there. The list goes on, but I don't want to turn this into an informercial.

corin_4• 16 years ago

Some of your features are great, but my personal view is that your solution is suitible for people who don't understand how to get the best out of their websites. I'd far rather maintain full control over the features I do/don't have, and full control over the database and how I access that data.

Still a nice service for some, though :)

bretthoerner3• 16 years ago

Fair enough. If you have ideas (re: features you want/don't want that we don't currently offer) we'd certainly like to hear them.

For what it's worth we do have an API to access/export your comments if you ever want to leave. I used DISQUS personally before I joined the company because I didn't want to implement login/avatars/sharing/notifications for what amounts to a pretty small blog, but ymmv.

mattmiller2• 16 years ago

I see what you are saying, but that is not the result I have observed. Most sites that I have seen using disqus don't have a lot of comments, or they at least not a lot of valuable comments. The best commented sites I have seen have been basic wordpress sites.

I don't think that means that people like to make a new login for each site, I think it means that there is more to creating a contributing community on your blog than lowering the barrier to entry.

bretthoerner3• 16 years ago

Sure, starting a real conversation will always be left to the writer.

But there have been plenty of times when I've wanted to contribute something but couldn't be bothered because I'd have to return to site for the next few days to check for replies. While I may do that on HN (like right now) I won't normally do that for Joe Random Blog.

enki• 16 years ago

be very wrong or even better, be controversial.

NEPatriot• 16 years ago

Force people to pick a side. Galvanize them to love you or hate you. But be genuine about this.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Blog comments suck. You don't want them.

tptacek2• 16 years ago

What he said.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

I see what you did there.

corin_4• 16 years ago

For the most part I would agree with you, however every now and then you do see some truly interesting follow-ups, feedback and discussion in comments. It depends on the subject of your blog, the subject of the specific post in question, and the type of readers you have, really.

mattmiller2• 16 years ago

They are great if you can build a community of regular posters. A lot of the financial bloggers have great comments, sometimes more valuable than the post itself. Check out http://www.nakedcapitalism.com.

I think that is the reason that tech crunch and MSNBC get no valuable comments, and blogs like the one above get great comments.

philwelch• 16 years ago

What you (may) want are trackbacks or whatever, where people post a response on their own blog. That can be a higher quality discussion.

patio11• 16 years ago

1) Ask people to comment. This is simple and stupidly effective for a few seconds of work. (As always, A/B test if you don't believe me.)

2) Engineer it such that the experience of commenting fills a need for people. People use comments to be validated, to mark out tribes, to cast other people out of tribes, to get questions answered, to form relationships, to blow off steam, to demonstrate expertise, etc etc. Figure out what motivates the users, then figure out how giving them what they want advances your interests.

3) Consider carefully whether getting twice as many blog comments as you do currently would improve your life in any way.

lkozma• 16 years ago

rel. to 2), also figure out which one you would actually like on your site. Depending on how you design things, you will get different commenting behavior.

clord• 16 years ago

Also consider that blogs get different comment rates depending on what they are about.

My wife's blog gets about 10+ comments per post with only 100-300 uniques per day. Sometimes a traffic spike will bring in a bunch of extra hits, but the amount of comments left after the spike depends on who was coming in. If it was a bunch of web developers or something: zero comments, even over thousands of hits.

A minor conclusion I draw from this is that blog comments come from community people, visitors and fans who keep coming back.

The "jadedness" of the community is a far bigger factor though. Some people are on a quest to consume, and not necessarily to participate.

SamAtt• 16 years ago

I really don't think bloggers should expect comments. In my experience blog comments fall into three categories.

1. People who want something from the author (notice, funding, what have you).

2. People who think the blogger is an idiot and feel the need to argue with them.

3. Personal friends of the blogger.

There are People who actually want to discuss the issue but they tend to gravitate towards communities where they know they'll get intelligent debate (like HN).

So unless you're a celebrity and big enough to have a whole community established around your blog you should really feel grateful for no comments. It means people don't think you're an idiot and that you're smart enough to not interact with your friends through a blog.

revorad• 16 years ago

If you link to your blog or at least one interesting post, you might get some comments from HN right now.

not_an_alien• 16 years ago

1) Write something is so unfathomable wrong that prompts people to respond, correcting you. 2) Write about something that appeals to people's ideologies, and be sure to go against the most popular creed. Examples: "HTML5 is bad"; "Apple is Evil"; anything about how some aspect of programming should be done

phreanix• 16 years ago

It might help to see a sample blog post. Can you give a link?

crouton2• 16 years ago

See below, it's a photo blog so I can understand some of these comments.

rradu• 16 years ago

Make a spelling error.

hotmind• 16 years ago

Often you need someone to start the conversation and set a positive tone. ProComments http://www.procomments.com is an option (full disclosure: it's my startup).

The service is 100% confidential and provides intelligent comments that add value and insight to your blog post.

ProComments also provides comments for YouTube videos and Facebook pages.

corin_4• 16 years ago

Interesting concept, wouldn't want it on a blog of mine, though.

Out of interest, do you just offer to post the first comment, or could someone for example ask for 100 comments on a single youtube video, making it look like lots of users commenting on it?

tcdent• 16 years ago

Often you need someone to start the conversation and set a positive tone.

Do you have any stats to back this up? Unless the responses you're providing actually contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way, I really don't see how just "getting the ball rolling" does any good.

lleger• 16 years ago

Write awesome content.

napierzaza• 16 years ago

Please DO NOT have at the bottom of the post "What do you guys think?"

Ask HN: How do you get more comments on a blog?

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