

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

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.
======
patio11
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
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.

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corin_
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.

------
jgrahamc
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...](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/how-to-sleep-on-long-haul-
flight.html)) 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...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/more-fun-with-toys-ikea-lillabo-
train.html)) 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...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-in-
your-head.html)) 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
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
FWIW, I've had posts w/ 4k pageviews get 15 comments and posts with 3k
pageviews get no comments.

------
bdickason
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...](http://getmochi.com/blog/fighting-the-gulf-oil-spill-one-haircut-at-a-
time)

"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.

------
SamAtt
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.

------
not_an_alien
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

------
mdolon
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).

~~~
bdickason
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.

------
bretthoerner
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_
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 :)

~~~
bretthoerner
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.

------
clord
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.

------
SlyShy
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.

------
jrockway
Blog comments suck. You don't want them.

~~~
tptacek
What he said.

~~~
jrockway
I see what you did there.

~~~
tptacek
An upvote wasn't enough.

------
crouton
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.

------
enki
be very wrong or even better, be controversial.

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

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

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

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

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rradu
Make a spelling error.

------
lleger
Write awesome content.

------
hotmind
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.

~~~
tcdent
_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.

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

