ClappingTree’s Web 2.0

“In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.“ – Jakob Nielsen

FOR SOME TIME I’VE BEEN WONDERING: What’re the best ways to encourage comments on one’s blog? And not just any comments, but those that promote meaningful exchange of insights and experiences. I’ve found 10 techniques and 10 plugins through a Google search. Could you add a tip or two here please?

According to usability guru Jakob Nielsen, one needs to:

• Make it easier to contribute. The lower the overhead, the more people will jump through the hoop.
• Make participation a side effect. For example, Amazon’s “people who bought this book, bought these other books” recommendations are a side effect of people buying books.
• Edit, don’t create. Let users build their contributions by modifying existing templates rather than creating complete entities from scratch.
• Reward — but don’t over-reward — participants. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles.
• Promote quality contributors. …give extra prominence to good contributions and to contributions from people who’ve proven their value, as indicated by their reputation ranking.

According to problogger Darren Rowse, one could use these techniques:

• Invite Comments...new readers that are unfamiliar with blogging don’t always know about comments or how to use them.
• Ask Questions. I find that when I include questions in my headings… you set a question in their mind from the first moments of your post.
• Be Open Ended. While you don’t want to purposely leave too many things unsaid there is an art to writing open ended posts that leaves room for your readers to be experts also.
• Interact with comments left. If you’re not willing to use your own comments section why would your readers?
• Set Boundaries. I noticed that shortly after I set the rules for my comments section (with a comments policy) that my comment numbers jumped up a little… and that comment threads generally stay constructive as a result.
• Be humble. I find that readers respond very well to posts that show your own weaknesses, failings and the gaps in your own knowledge rather than those posts where you come across as knowing everything there is to know on a topic.
• Be gracious. There are times where you as the blogger will get something wrong in your posts… spelling or grammar… crux of your argument or some other aspect of your blogging… a graceful approach to comments where you admit where you are wrong and others is right can bring out the lurkers and make them feel a little safer in leaving comments.
• Be controversial? …it doesn’t always work (and I personally avoid it as much as I can these days) – but there’s nothing like controversy to get people commenting on your blog.
• ‘Reward’ Comments. There are many ways… that range from simply including a ‘good comment’ remark through to highlighting them in other posts that you write.
• Make it Easy to Comment. …there is one situation where I rarely leave a comment – even if the post deserves it – blogs that require me to login before making a comment. Keep your comments section as simple and as easy to use as possible.

According to Caroline Middlebrook, we could use some of these WordPress Plugins (comments in [] brackets are mine):

• DoFollow plugin: [I've stopped using this because this attracts visitors who drop in just to add some inane comments and a plug for their sites.]
• Top Commentator plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• CommentLuv plugin: [I've installed and activated this. But it's not working on my blog. Probably incompatible with some existing plugins.]
• Most Commented Posts plugin: [Maybe I'll use this too.]
• Recent Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Subscribe to Comments plugin: [I'm using this. Useful.]
• Threaded Comments plugin: [Hey! How many plugins does one need to use?]
• Gravatars plugin: [ditto]
• Custom Smileys plugin: [ditto]
• Edit Comments plugin: [ditto]