Having a comment section on your blog is a good idea because it becomes a venue for interaction between you and your readers as well as between the readers themselves. However, if you remember having your very first blogs with no more than a handful of readers then you probably know how lonely a blog without any comment looks. When it comes to building up your blog traffic the bad news is that a lonely looking blog does not only feel somewhat disappointing to the blogger but also lessens the readers enthusiasm for the blog. Because of this a comment section on a new blog can actually be a liability instead of an asset in a new blog. So what can you do about it? One of the great things about blogs is that they are customizable. So for a new blog what you can do is simply disable the comment section first until you get more readership. Note that you will need to keep track of the traffic to your site and the amount of subscribers to gauge if it is a good time to enable comments. If you do this remember to give visitors a way to contact you though for questions and suggestion by putting a contact/email me page or simply giving your email in your about page. Another thing you can do is to twist your friends and family’s arms and ask them to comment on your new blog. Make sure you reply to their comments though to keep the conversation going. Once you have a few comments it would then be a good idea to comment on OTHER blogs to entice the blogger (other than your friend) to visit your page and leave a comment as well. As soon as someone you don’t know leaves a comment reply to that comment and visit their blog/site. You can also send them a personal email (a problem for bloggers using BLOGGER since an email isn’t required to comment) to make the commenter feel even more appreciated. If you are an “old blogger” though and just starting another blog then you don’t really need to disable the comments section. But make sure that you promote your new blog to old readers to ensure that your new blog becomes as lively or even more lively than your old blog.
Originally posted on May 9, 2008 @ 2:11 pm
