BABB-12: Interact With Your Blog Readers
Participate in the comments on one of your own blog posts. Readers will feel as if you’re interested in what they have to say, you might learn something, and you’ll also increase the comment count on your post.
This is our task for Day 12 of the Be A Better Blogger series. You guys were asking for some easier tasks… so here you go 
You should be doing this already, assuming you’ve received your first comment at your blog. It’s very important to reply to questions and comments, and also to welcome new readers.
This is what turns visitors into readers, and readers into commenters. When a new visitor reads the friendly conversation between readers and author, it encourages them to join in and leave their own comment.
Why is comment count important? Two reasons. One, it increases the percieved value of your blog. And two, once visitors begin interacting with you they turn into loyal readers – which will steadily grow your readership (increasing the actual value of your blog).
Speaking of comments, many people are worried about comment spam. Simply activate the Akismet plugin in your WordPress dashboard and let it filter your comments for you.
To round off today’s task, I’m going to leave you with a great article written by Darren Rowse: 10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog
Now leave a comment below so I can respond to it, and mark today’s task off my list 
Best,
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You are so right. This does make your readers feel you are interested in what they have to say and their opinions.
Easy is good!
My blog has pretty much been devoid of comments. But I’m beginning to see more interaction thanks to some other “BABBers” and by being more active in social media sites.
I’m going to start asking more questions and being more open ended in my posts.
This is a very good tip to get things going on your blog. Getting guests and readers to come back is important and an easy way to do so is by interacting with them. Great advice Lynn!
I enjoy when I receive a reply on my comments.
This is a topic I’ve been struggling with lately. I have one blog in particular with high visitor numbers, but very very few comments. Oddly enough the blog with less visitors gets more comments.
Could it depend on the target market? The business blog with the “your links are good here” graphic gets more comments than the non-business blog. I usually ask for comments on a regular basis, and even wrote a whole post about it. Still nada.
Suggestions?
[...] of the best things you can do is interact with your readers on a regular basis. Pay attention to their comments and feedback, and respond to it personally if [...]
This is very true – interacting with your fellow bloggers is crucial in developing relationships on the Internet. It is a great way to see what people are really thinking and it can help you with how you cater to your business as well.
What strange irony that was…
I wrote this post and then immediately afterwards came down with the flu and never made it back to respond to your comments! Geez 
Kara – if you want to leave the link to that blog we can take a look at it. You may be right about the target market, but it wouldnt hurt to get some group feedback if you’re open to that.
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
Oh no! I hope you are feeling better today. Being sick is no fun at all.
The blog is here:
http://www.idea-queen.com/blog/
Lynn, sorry to hear that. I hope you are feeling better.
Thank you both – I’m starting to feel better today
Kara – what about the click-through rate? Could it be your readers are clicking through your links instead of sticking around to comment?
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.
Currently around 20%. I hadn’t stopped to think about it being the reason they aren’t commenting. Very well could be, although not sure the CTR is high enough to make that much of a difference.
I guess the fact that more than half the traffic is from search engines and people just seeking quick information could make a difference too.
Different types of blogs will warrant different types of visitor responses. If your objective is to get CTR, then comment rate is not a factor you want to base your blog success on.
But if you want feedback, often you have to ask for it straight out – usually by ending your blog post with an open ended question or direct request for comments on the topic.
Follow me @lynnterry on Twitter.