Big deal little blogging tip: Want more comments?
Obviously if you want more comments, you'll want to post interesting, original posts that your readers want to engage with. Those will be different for every kind of blog. There are all kinds of advice on building that kind of content... but today's one blogging/getting more comments tip is simple.
My ONE tip for today, that's "kind of a big deal" (words of Ron Burgundy): If you want more comments, turn off the word verification. This one single thing can really, really help people be way more willing to comment!! It is so annoying to have to fill in the blank after interpreting the mystery words and numbers... and they're getting harder these days, I swear. I am way less likely to leave a comment if I think I'm going to fail the captcha or don't have the time to try it a couple times.
So please, PLEASE, right now, go CHECK your settings and make sure you have word verification turned off!! You may not even realize you have it on, but you could be losing important feedback and community-building comments by having that barrier! Here's some instructions on how to turn off the captcha in both old and new Blogger if you need it. And honestly--I have so few spam comments, the captcha is really not necessary for a blog like most of ours. I have mine set so I have to approve comments on posts older than 3 months, so I can click "publish" or "spam" on those when they come in, and spam is kinda more likely to be on older posts. But seriously, no worries, I'm sure you won't have a problem with spam without the word verification. Seriously.
First world problems, amIright....
Source: crafterminds.com via Pinterest
Okay, but while we're talking about comments... I just found this site, SEOmoz, which has all kinds of cool and useful SEO advice I don't really understand. But I did see a simple article on getting more comments--written by the experts in search engine optimization! (And, if you couldn't guess... the first tip they mention is, make it as easy as possible to leave a comment!!!--AKA, turn off that tricky word verification if you have it on.)
Another great resource for blogging tips is not original at all, but the Alt Summit blog has a lot of advice I was just recently clicking through. Kinda wanna go all through the archives if I have time--pages and pages of simple "how to..."s, but most of them are really short and sweet and easy to read. So anyway, for blogging inspiration and business advice check out the new Alt blog.
Okay, hope you don't mind my soapbox here about word verification--I'll be back to myself tomorrow!