How to Move The Conversation In Your Favour In the Comment Section

What people are saying can be a fabulous boost to your site. We’ll tell you how to use comments to move the conversation in your favour.

Comments can be a wonderful asset to build up your blog, website or social media following. Everyone has an opinion, and thanks to the Internet, everyone can have a voice. Comments can be just as informative and entertaining as the content itself. So what are you doing to get people to talk in your comment sections?

We’re not talking about the comment trolls that leave nasty, misspelled swear words on YouTube, Facebook and blog posts. Although they are fun to read on occasion, those kinds of comments don’t do much for you. But in general, comments are a great way to promote your site and gain new followers. Let’s go over a few ways comments are your new best friend, forever.

Search Engines Love Comments

In the back of your mind, you should always be thinking about how to get your site ranked higher on search engines such as Google. Good news—comments help! They add unique, on-topic content for your pages and show search engines that your page is fresh. Plus, it helps add other keywords to the page, because no matter how hard you try, you just can’t stuff them all in there. That’s why you should always ask your readers to comment and add their option in the comments section. It doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad—just as long as the conversation keeps going.

Build a Community

Responding to your audience’s comments is an amazing way to build a loyal community. You can let people know that you are listening to what they say by adding your acknowledgement to a comment someone has left for you on your post or article. It’s also a good way to explain your point of view in greater depth or respond to feedback. Just make sure you don’t take feedback personally, and never respond with a unfriendly or rude comment of your own. It could turn into a throw-down, drag-out, schoolyard brawl. This not only drives away your audience, but it also makes you look like real unprofessional.

Make New Friends

Go beyond your blog or website. Look for people in a similar field of expertise and check out their sites. Post comments to their blogs or social media sites, and add to their conversation. Most blogs will let you attach a link back to your site. If your comment contains insightful, useful information, people will start checking out your blog. It’s a wonderful way to build some blogging karma and get new people to visit your site.

How is the comment traffic on your site? Have you responded to comments in the past? How do you feel about leaving comments? Hey, here’s a great idea—you should totally leave a comment with us on Twitter or Instagram!