The main goal of blogging is to reach the community with your ideas, skills, and interpretations, or, in other words, engage with readers and visitors in the comments. These ideas are valued when more people are watching your blog and they engage with your blog. Have you ever checked a tutorial blog post on how to accomplish something, had an issue with your implementation, and inquired about it from the author in the comments section? It is inevitable that you felt some kind of enthusiasm when the author replied to the comment, and disappointment when he/she didn’t reply. It’s similar to a teacher giving the student personal attention and extra care. Similarly, this behavior in engaging with users in comments can build up the community and strengthen the relationship with existing customers.
The question is how to engage with readers in the comments. Throughout this article, we’ll bring you several ways how to do it and why it is important.
Responding to Questions and Inquiries
Once you publish an article or a tutorial, questions from your readers are inevitable. Some may have doubts to clear out errors they got, or some may ask for alternative solutions. Whatever it may be, it is important to note your readers’ questions and provide the answers. This is considered to be one of the easiest ways to interact with readers.
There’s a chance that you may lose your avid readers if their questions are ignored because it discourages them. This is also a chance for the writer to connect with the readers on a closer level. The more attention you give the reader, the more passion they will have for your articles. Readers’ questions will not only help them but the blogger himself, as this allows learning new things and refreshes the current knowledge they has. If you do not know the answer to a particular question, it may be best to assign someone else to the team to answer it. So, my advice is to get in the habit of looking into the comments and answering the readers’ questions.
Here's a good example of how the writer of this particular blog has answered readers' questions.
Obtain Feedback
As a writer, you constantly have to improve yourself. Users’ feedback on the offered content is the best and easiest way to see the impact of your work and bring more interesting, relevant, and current issues related-content in the field to the blog. Make sure to ask the readers to post their feedback and thoughts in the comments and you can do this when you are writing your final say in the article. This may help you to form a long-lasting relationship with the audience as well.
See how it's done easily in the following example.
Include an area where the users could add comments easily.
Welcome the First-time Commenters
Acquiring new readers is just as important as retaining existing readers. The more who engage with readers and visitors in the comments in the posts, the better. Therefore, make sure to acknowledge the first-time commenters and make them feel welcome to participate. This way, you will always have a community to keep the discussions alive.
Awareness about Comment Policies
Considering the topic of this post, which is engage with readers and visitors in the comments, we have all seen how people are reacting when their comments have been removed. This often happens in social media posts, when someone posts an unethical comment and the owner decides to remove it. However, with public blog sites, the situation is quite different. You may have to give explanations to the readers just in case you removed a comment. This is why it’s important to come clean on the commenting policies on your blog site beforehand. You can normally do this in the first comment of a discussion by posting the comment guidelines and would save you from any trouble that may come in the future comments.
Value Users’ Participation
The saying goes as “A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected”. This is true in any context and applies to reader engagement too. Readers become attracted to the discussions and community rather than the content and make sure to appreciate them for their participation. The readers will return the favor by sticking around and more constantly participating in the conversations. After all, their comments are valuable to add different thoughts, and they may also help to correct mistakes if there are any. Remember to always check them, correct your mistakes then and there to keep the integrity of the articles you write, and to retain reliability.
See how the following author has reacted to the user comments.
Final Thoughts
Now that you have seen the benefits of engaging with readers in the comments and seen how to do it, why don't you too try that in your upcoming blogs? Yes, you may not see much improvement in the beginning, but with time, readers will form their own discussion groups inside your comments and you may be able to boost your view rate faster.
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