4 Ways to Gain Readers Using Comments: Part 1 of How to Attract Readers to Your Blog

4 Ways to Gain Readers Using Comments


Part 1 of the series 
How to Attract Readers to Your Blog

What You Will Learn

You spent days (or weeks! Months!) setting up your blog, perfecting your design, and writing quality content…but you have no readers! Before you can even begin to worry about developing a following, you first need to let the world know your blog exists. But how do you get your name out there?

I've been asked by a number of people how I network my blog to attract readers. To answer that question, I’ve written a series of Blogging Tips and Tricks posts. In each post in the series I will outline a few methods for attracting new readers to your blog.

Let's Do This!

Method 1: Comment on similar blogs

Meaningful Comments

Why it works:

• Instant audience: Commenting on similar blogs gets your name out there and in a venue where readers already like the subject you’re blogging about
• Instant advertising: Every comment you leave includes a link to your blog, your name, and your picture
• Instant attraction: You can show off your winning personality through quality comments
• Instant recognition: The more people see you, the more they remember you

Meaningful comments can serve as extremely effective advertising. I first found Nic from Irresistible Reads through her prolific and awesome comments on other people’s blogs. She was everywhere! I thought she sounded like a really nice person and so I clicked on one of her comments to check out her blog (which very quickly became one of my “Read every day” blogs).

Make your links hot

Why it works:

• You're making it easy for people to find your blog
• In a list of comments, your direct link is more likely to be clicked on

I’m pretty busy, so the easier bloggers make it for me to visit their blog, the more likely I am to visit them. Sure your name is a link to your blog, but that’s a two step process that, when multiplied by about 20 different commenters, it takes a lot of time. Make things easier by making your links hot, especially on meme/hopping days.

Copy and paste this code to make your links hot:

    <a href="http://smallreview.blogspot.com/">Small Review</a>

Replace my URL with the URL you want the link to lead to (probably your blog). Replace the name of my blog with the name of your own blog, or whatever words you want to use as your anchor text.

Possible Cons:

• Some people think this is spammy

As long as you're posting a quality comment, I don't consider it spammy to include your link. So when you're here at Small Review, feel free to "sign" your comments with a link to your blog.

Tie your commenting name to your blog

Commenting is about making friends, but it’s also about advertising your blog. If you want your comments to serve this double duty, then make sure your commenting name ties back to your blog in some way.

In a world of Jane Does, don't be another Jane:

If your commenting name is only your first name, then that can be very confusing. I can think of three bloggers who all have the same name (and I’m sure there are more), and their commenting name is not tied to their blog name. As a result, when I see their comments I only know which blogger they are by looking at their avatar, and not every blog shows avatars.

How to do it right:

Alex from A Girl, Books, and Other Things has her commenting name set up optimally. When she leaves a comment, her user name is displayed like this:

Alex (A Girl, Books, OtherThings)

This is perfect because I know her name, but I’m also reminded every time she comments of the name of her blog. This combination of her name and her blog helps solidify the association between her (her personality shining through her comments) and her blog name. If I didn’t know her and I started seeing her comments crop up on a bunch of the same blogs I read, then this association between her name and her blog really helps me remember who she is and lets her blog stand out in my mind.

Identity Theft!!

If another Alex pops up in the blogging world, I won’t mix up their comments with Alex from A Girl, Books, and Other Things. It may seem at first like having a bunch of different Alex-authored comments all over might actually help her by spreading her name around, but what if the new Alex is a spammer or otherwise irritating? You certainly don’t want your good name mixed up with a spammer!

Tie your commenting picture to your blog

The avatar that appears next to your comments is another way for you to remind people of your blog. For me, I use the same picture that’s in my header and my button. Repetition is the key. The more people see your images and name around, the more likely to are to remember you.

Of course if you’ve been commenting with a particular image for years then you may not want to change it up. It all depends, but what's most important to remember here is consistency. Pick a picture and stick with it. Frequently changing your avatar picture leads to confusion and you won't capitalize on the "I see X everywhere and so I remember it" phenomenon.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series where I’ll go over a few more tips on how you can attract readers to your blog!

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