Getting More Blog Comments

A Reward for Your Comment

Apart from the simple thank you, acknowledgement or the like, it could also be a good idea to reward anyone who comments using alternative methods. Holding something like a competition would not only encourage people to contribute more, but could also potentially attract a whole bunch of new visitors (and commenters) to your blog. Word of mouth is a powerful tool! Holding a competition could therefore be a great way to drive traffic to your blog.

Important Questions

Before setting about with this, ask yourself this:

1. What sort of a competition or a contest would be best suited for the sort of website/blog you run?
2. How long will it run?
3. Who will be the participants?
4. What will be the prizes? Monetary or non-monetary? Is there money that can be spent, if you choose the former?
5. How will you publicize the contest?

Some Competition/Contest Ideas

There’s a whole slew of things you can do, it basically depends on what sort of a website you run. I’ll throw some ideas now, in no particular order:

1. Choose one random comment for a reward. This could be done daily or weekly, or on a per-post basis
2. Retweet to win. Choose a random winner from anyone who retweets your posts.
3. Choose a winner from people who ‘like’ your Facebook page. This could be a great way to promote your FB page AND your blog. Choose a random winner or make the nth (1000^th, 10,000^th) person to like your page the winner!
4. If you’re in sales, a contest similar to point 3 above can be done by giving away a prize to the 100^th or 500^th sale and so on.
5. Hold a competition, for instance have people submit pictures or share videos. It could be something like a Christmas competition, where people could post pictures of their Christmas trees. Or a Halloween costume competition. Sky’s the limit here.
6. Reward everyone (or a random person) who subscribes to your blog or newsletter. This is a great list-building method as well, and useful from an affiliate’s perspective.

Reward Ideas

A reward can be

1. A simple cash reward in dollars.
2. An eBook or a training module.
3. Tickets to an event – a concert or a football game
4. A giveaway – like an all-expense paid vacation for two
5. Free membership upgrade on your website
6. A service – like consultation or a coaching session.
7. Ad space on your blog.
8. A free premium theme or a domain name or even a hosting package.
9. Best Buy credit

The Runner-ups

Don’t simply ignore the people who ended in 2^nd or 3^rd place. Rewarding the runner-ups can go a long way in building goodwill, and probably encourage people to participate in any other contests you might hold in the future.

Sponsored Event

The contest can also be a sponsored thing. Look around to see if someone would like to sponsor your contest or giveaway. All it takes is a simple email to be sent out to a list of potential sponsors.

Publicity

Like any good marketer, make sure you have a publicity campaign in place for your contest. People need to know about it. Use other social mediums like Facebook and Twitter, ask your friends to plug the contest on their walls. Publicize the contest on other blogs. Promote it like you would promote your blog. Get the word out!

Final Thoughts

Holding contests is a popular and proven way of driving more visitors to your website, backlinking, and publicity over social mediums. Just make sure you set a budget for whatever you do, and keep in line with that!

This post also concludes the series of posts on getting more comments and visitors on your blog! Everything that has been said over the course of the previous few posts is easily do-able, inexpensive in terms of cost, investment and implementation, and in all probability won’t even require a lot of effort or time spent on your part.

But it could potentially have a whole slew of people voicing their thoughts, opinions and having their say on your blog and posts. And your blog could go from being a little-known blog to a massively popular and active one!