Encouraging conversation to take place on your blog can be difficult, and not every blog post is going to be a talking point, so don’t get discouraged by a lack of comments.

You need to build up a readership and actively encourage conversation on your blog and that takes time.

However, if you are finding that nobody at all ever comments on your blog it is worth looking into ways you can encourage more interaction going with your readers.

The most obvious way to encourage conversation is to ask questions. Rather than simply posting your point of view on a matter, pose a question.

For example, if you review a product, finish with a call for your readers to leave their own views. Have they used the product? Has anyone found it useful? And so on.

Even a simple ‘What do you think? Please leave a comment’ can gently encourage people to comment.

Don’t forget to reply to comments left, this is crucial to encourage further commenting!

There are other ways to encourage conversation, such as being deliberately provocative, but be warned that while these types of methods can result in more comments they can also undermine the value of your blog in the long run. My advice would be not to be provocative for the sake of being provocative, but if you feel strongly on a contentious issue consider the value of blogging about it.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 9:00 am and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.