Have you seen commenting sections on other blogs and websites? Yes, you might have for sure. At least you might have thought "Do I need comments on my blog?" after seeing them. In this article, the answer to Do I need comments on my blog is well explained.
In present days, blogs and websites with comments can be found often. However, a question remains. Does the purpose of having comments on a blog or a website fulfilled? Then what is the purpose of having comments on a blog? The following are common answers given by blog owners.
To depict the quality of the content of a blog
To confirm a form of social proof
Comments help writers to understand what the readers want them to write about
Responding to comments helps writers/owners to deepen their relationship with the readers
The act of commenting theoretically increases the likelihood that the user will also engage in other ways, such as subscribing to their email newsletter or making purchases.
"Without comments, a blog isn’t really a blog. To me, blogging is not just about publishing content, but also the two-way communication and community building aspects behind it."
But, Everett Bogue says,
"To say a blog is not a blog when it doesn’t have comments can’t be true, because my blog works just fine without comments. My ideas are definitely not perfect, but at a certain point I had to make a decision about where my focus would lie. Did I want hordes of Internet randoms deciding where my ideas needed to go, or did I want to proactively choose the opinions that would influence my ideas?”
Just like that, there are controversial ideas behind comments on a blog. However, in this article, both ideas are discussed and a conclusion has been made for your ease.
Have you ever heard that blog comments increase blog traffic?
I think you have heard this one because there are so many articles and posts that blog comments increase blog traffic. Let's see whether that is true or not using statistical data.
Hubspot has analyzed comments, views, and link data from over 100,000 blog posts. And, they have found a correlation between blog posts and views/links. Let's see how that performance is.
As you can see, Hubspot has found that there is no correlation between the number of comments on a post and the number of links that post got. There is also no correlation between the number of comments and the number of views that the post got. You can see it on your own - check the graphs closely.
That is the common belief in comments enabling.
So, do you really need comments on your blog?
Thinking of not enabling comments? Wait a minute! We just saw that comments cannot improve blog traffic directly, not just something that blog comments are not worthy of. Here is how blog comments become worthy.
1. Discovering new sources
People in blog comment sections share relevant sources regarding the ideas that they are expressing. For example, links to websites/blogs that have relevant content to the comment, related images, videos, links to related articles, etc. Plus, a well-written comment on the topic will often cause blog owners to visit the website of the commenter. So, that helps to discover new sources. What is more interesting is, blog comments help you to discover new blogs which are your competitors. Then you can get decisions to improve yourself and gain and learn new strategies from those new blogs as well.
2. Chance to learn more about the topic
A well-researched or well-written blog post might not be the best as you think. Because the word count or the time that you spent writing that particular post does not make it the best.
However, experiences and ideas, resources given by commenters can make your blog post more knowledgeable and interactive.
Plus, how big effort and time you put into a particular article as a writer, still you cannot make a 100% perfect blog post. There is a 1%-2% miss that can occur.
Let me give you a scenario. Let me know if this resonates with you. I am fairly sure that when you finish reading this post, you will think that she had forgotten to mention this and that. So, from there may you start sharing your ideas and knowledge or resources by commenting.
That is how this works. As readers. share their resources, and knowledge, you and other readers get a valuable chance to learn more and more. In a nutshell, comments help to discover more about a particular topic.
3. Social proof for your blog.
Have ever heard what social proof is? Actually, it can be perfectly described by the following scenario. Imagine that you are visiting a blog and you see a list of blog posts. The posts have 3 comments, 12 comments, 152 comments, and 20 comments respectively. Which post would choose to take a look at first? It is obviously the post with 152 comments right? When people see lots of comments compared to other posts, they feel that there is something very interesting going on with that particular post. So, people highly tend to visit and take a look at it. That is how social proof works.
So, with comments, people start noticing how interesting things are happening in your content. That is how enabling comments drive you to more users with the effect of social proof. Blog comments are great social proof, the more you have the more you get.
4. Ability to gain new topics to write content
Commenters express their thoughts, suggestions, and ideas as comments. As a blog owner, if you go through user comments very carefully, you will notice that those comments consist of new content ideas for you to write. Publishing content related to users' ideas makes your blog an attractive space for readers. Isn't that wonderful?
5. Can participate in discussions
When you enable comments on your blog, readers start commenting and they create good discussions. In those discussions, you can also participate by giving your ideas. Those discussions create a good relationship between you and the readers. Active discussions make an interactive blog.
In other words, YES you NEED comments on your blog. Because comments can create a big impact on your blog positively. But remember, you have responsibilities of maintaining comments and creating an attractive space for your readers to comment by choosing the best commenting plugin/commenting system
In A Nutshell...
Yes, you need comments on your blog. There are misconceptions about blog comments and as blog owners, you need to find and realize what they are. Avoid misconceptions, understand the importance of having blog comments, and make your blog a successful one.
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