This week I chatted to the hilarious Carly Jacobs from one of my favourite blogs, Smaggle.com, about how she got her readers to start chatting!
500 Words. End It in A Question
Whenever any new contributors ask about my specifications for an article I always say ‘500 words. End it in a question.’ People are so busy and they don’t have time to read pages of your inner monologue. Get to the point, be precise and then give your readers a direct call to action. Lists are great too. I have a regular feature where I ask my readers to list their top favourite 3 things from the month and these posts consistently get more comments than any other kind of post.
Respond to Every Comment.
Every single one, across all platforms. You readers want to know that they’re being heard and that you actually care about their opinion. There’s no point in asking a question unless your readers feel like you care about the answer. You can skip any spammy comments like ‘Great post!’ but if someone takes the time to construct a thoughtful and insightful response to something you’ve written, it would be super rude not to reply.
Reward Your Best Commenters.
If you have a group of readers who comment on every post, like everything you put on Facebook and are generally super star supporters of your blog, you need to treat this people like gold. Email them regularly to ask for advice about upcoming features, send them extra products you get sent for review, tag them in social media posts if you Instagram something you think they’d like. If you’re trying to monetise your blog you need to pay attention to your numbers but you mustn’t ever forget that each of those numbers is a person and one loyal reader is worth a thousand flighty ones. So take care of the ones that take care of you.
Check out Carly’s super chatty community over at www.smaggle.com now!
