Rewarding Blog Commenters

Posted by Charles on January 6th, 2009

I have always found that comments add a huge amount to articles and help to differentiate blogs from normal websites. The comments section is the place that you look to first for a second opinion or confirmation about whether what you’ve read also works for others.

This feedback is helpful, interesting and this interaction really helps to engage your audience. People don’t want to feel that they’re alone… comments help to build a buzzing community around your blog. For example, if you head over to Problogger there are frequently tens if not hundreds of comments made in response to each article. This is invaluable to Problogger and helps to reinforce his position as one of the leading blogs about blogging.

The value of comments is one of the main reasons why I changed PiggyBankPie to a DoFollow blog as the flow of PageRank back to the commenter’s site acts as a small thank you. In fact, when used on a consistent and frequent basis contributing comments on DoFollow blogs can be a very effective way of increasing your site’s search engine rankings as it’s one of the easiest ways of receiving obtaining keyword-rich deep links.

As it’s a new year I thought I’d take things a step further and write a post at the start of each month highlighting the top three commenters from the previous month. Hopefully this will encourage more people to contribute comments and reward those who contribute the most. Over time I may extend this and also include the best or most insightful comment but to start with it’s probably best to keep things simple.

So to start things off, what other techniques have you tried to increase the number of comments made on your blog?

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3 Responses to “Rewarding Blog Commenters”

Dan Harrison Says:
March 30th, 2009 at 7:44 am
I’ve noticed the top commenters post (because I was mentioned), and I think that’s a great idea. A great incentive to have more commenters. That would encourage more repeat discussion rather than just ‘oncers’.

(And my new personal blog is now dofollow)
Dan
Charles Says:
March 31st, 2009 at 2:21 pm
Encouraging repeat commenters is definitely the aim as otherwise DoFollow blogs can end up just attracting one-off comments from people looking for a quick link.

I’ve actually fallen behind on the monthly top commenters post but will put together a round-up post for this within the next week.
Dan Harrison Says:
April 1st, 2009 at 2:50 am
I’ve found that some people stick around for a discussion. However, most of the oncer comments I get are really poor and are just “thanks for the info”. So I delete them!