A lot of on-line businesses use WordPress blog as one of their marketing tools. WordPress is a free blogging platform that is easy to install and maintain. Small businesses prefer using WordPress because of its simple Content Management System (CMS), which is adaptable to any kind of business.
Blogs are good marketing tools to reach to a company’s audience. Through articles, infographics, videos and other contents, companies can create connections to the people who uses their services or products. One of the best ways to connect to your audience is opening a comments box on your blog.
Image Source: Link
WordPress allows flexible ways of commenting. It has various plugins like Akismet or Disqus to improve usability. Comment section is also a good way to promote interaction and healthy conversations among your readers. It helps build a community and your company acts as mediator for people who share the same interests.
Why Do People Comment?
They say that “no man is an island.” People are social in nature so they cannot live without communicating with others. This is why social media are becoming very popular these days. People share our opinions, feelings and even stories to inspire, warn, or entice others. The urge to communicate is what makes them feel that there are others who share the same passion and interest as they do.
Benefits of Having a Comment Section
There are web administrators that close comments box to avoid spammers. But closing this section is like telling that your company is not open for customer suggestions and complaints. Plus, you are missing the chance to further optimize your blog.
Here are other benefits of having comments section in your blogs:
Increase Blog Activity- One of the factors that Google use in measuring the quality of a site is the amount of on-page activities. A lot of activity, including posts and comments, shows that you blog is active. This also attracts readers to read your posts.
Increase Traffic- Comments help increase blog activity. This leads to better traffic. It means more people are likely to share your articles in social media, which will attract more readers. This new readers eventually take part in discussions in your posts.
Study Demographic and Geographic Information- Companies can study their market through discussion in the comments section. Are there more male or female readers? Are they parents, young adults or students? How do they react to your product? What part of the world gives more interest?
Makes the Company Close to People- Feedbacks drive the company closer to people. For small scale businesses this move is very important. They build trust, get returning clients and eventually grow their business. Through this section, the company can easily address questions and issues about their company. They can easily say thank you, and appreciate the participation of their buyers in improving their business.
Keep Comment Section Engaging
Blog administrators should always keep their comments section engaging to attract more feedbacks. Here are few way to keep this section engaging:
Entice Readers- As administrator, you have to entice people to take part in dicussions. Make sure that your articles attract readers to share their opinions. Questions make them curious and call for action encourages them to act. Adding: “Share your Opinions”, or “What do you think?” can help to engage your audience. Once they leave messages, you have to reply! Act as a facilitator to encourage healthy conversation.
Add Disqus Plug-in- Disqus is a helpful plug-in that enables commenting easier. Sometimes users hesitate to share comments because they have to register for an account. With this plug-in, they can use their Facebook, Twitter, or Google accounts. They can check for replies to their comments too.
Try Image Comment- This is another plug-in that is good for young audience. Millennials love using meme and gif’s to convey their feelings. This is funny and attractive so it motivates more comments.
Use Comment Rating- This adds flavor to the usual activities in the comment section. Sometimes users are too lazy to type a few words. With comment rating, they can just “thumbs- up” or “thumbs-down” a comment. Poorly and highly rated comments are display differently.
Conclusion
Comments are important part of a blog. WordPress has various plugins to improve the usability of comments box in order to engage readers. You should not be afraid to use this blog feature to communicate with your audience because establishing rapport and communication helps build trust. This eventually leads to better traffic, sales and consumer response.
Dont forget to share this article in social media! You can also Join BloggersIdeas on Facebook & Google+ for getting similar updates. Subscribe to BloggersIdeas feed via RSS or EMAIL to receive instant updates.
Da. În ciuda a ceea ce cred (majoritatea) oamenilor, comentariile pe blog funcționează și astăzi. Cu toate acestea, când vine vorba de comentarii pe blog (sau construirea de linkuri în general), calitatea câștigă peste cantitate. În altă ordine de idei, doriți să scrieți comentarii pe bloguri care sunt relevante pentru nișa dvs. și să aducă valoare cititorilor. Spam-ul altor bloguri cu sute de comentarii nu te va ajuta.
Very thankful for these resources, it seem like it will really help with what I need to get done. Thank you very much for the post!
I believe that having a comments section is really important for a blog. However, given the way social media works today, I feel like it’s necessary for blogs to innovate their comments section. I noticed that some of the biggest media brands make use of an engagement and moderation platform like the ones being offered by Viafoura that includes a live community chat and I really think that it’s a great way to spark engagement within your community today.
When a blog has comment sections, readers tend to express their ideas through comments and discuss certain things with others. These discussions go on for a long period of time. So, that helps to improve user interaction of a blog.
Commenting is a way of communicating. Create your content page with options of expressing, sharing and commenting on the knowledge that you have shared. Try to get the more relevant posts which are specific, demanding, significant, effective and meaningful.
Hi blogger, i must say you have hi quality content here.
Your website should go viral. You need initial
traffic boost only. How to get it? Search for; Mertiso’s tips go viral
Really comment section play a important role as it explains the quality of the content, like if the content is good and unique users automatically visit to your site and read the blog and submit the real comment or feedback.
Blogs are the way of sharing knowledge from one end to another and it forms an important part of marketing. The latest trend is to have informative and engaging content which will allow visitors to co-relate with the write-up and make them visit website. Being part of pull marketing strategy, content must have Call to Action options so that visitors can contribute to the topic. Commenting is a way of triggering insightful conversation. Prepare a content page with options of commenting, sharing, upvoting and down-voting the information. Allow users to comment using social media accounts, this will help to collect insightful data about the visitor. I feel using Enterprise web content management services to design such pages will improve site performance and ensure that designing and managing a site doesn’t incur too much of cost and time. CMS like WordPress comes with various plugins and widgets to expand functionality of a website. Social media Feather and Commentluv are examples of such tools that allow above discussed functionalities.
I started commenting on some blogs I truly liked their content. The idea of getting the backlink and traffic is important but the most important is the quality of comment. the comment should be relevant and should make impression so that the visitor get curious to see your site or blog.
Comment Section – to be exact, helpful, powerful, in demand, a must have, a key to your success. I guess if you will ask why, then the reason is very obvious, self-explanatory.
It helps you to know your customers view by leaving their opinion in the comment section and I must say that it you need it to be visible and easy to use. Good explanation from you by the way!
“People are social.” EXACTLY. It’s all about engagement.
You are not benefiting fully from your blogs if you don’t enable your comment section. Of course it will help your traffic, but more than that, it will help you establish relationships that will never happen if you don’t allow your readers to impart their opinions and feelings.
Hi dianawalls No Doubt,
WordPress is most powerful CMS for small business owner.
of course the only way to communicate with other or webmaster is comment section or Contact us page. But for quickly reply comment section is very best way.
But i have a question. I have a website about birthday wishes, wedding anniversary wishes messages. most of my reader comment of topic. once I checked most comment in small seo tool website. I found all these comment other website. it’s mean people save only one or two comment and put these comment on every website. in this situation what I do? Please suggest me. Thanks in advance.
@Muhammad Irfan
Yeah. That happens usually. I guess this people are just there to get some link juice out of your site. There is nothing wrong with it as long as they leave related comments. I suggest, just remove them if their feedbacks are off-topic. What you need are “real” people who actually cares about your article.
Hi Muhammad,
In your case, i would suggest to write a content which motivates visitors to provide you with the suggestions rather then just commenting formally. Try to get more interective posts.