A key part of a successful blog (and getting traffic) is building a strong community.
Check out vol. 2 for how to get people to read your blog. Getting people to read your blog is not enough, however. You look at the best blogs and you’ll notice that there are lots of comments after each post — good comments at that. How do you get those good comments?
You have to build a community. And trust me that community and those comments will drive traffic. People will start coming back to your blog over and over again to leave comments to you and to other users.
Eric Berger once told me that when he started beatblogging that he responded to every comment that was posted on his blog. He doesn’t do that anymore, but he still tries to respond to as many comments as possible and moderates every comment left on his blog. You’ll notice that the comments left after his posts are for the most part civil and thoughtful.
Those comments legitimately add value to his posts and his blog. Yes, this is time consuming, but this approach acknowledges how important comments are to a good blog. When you first start off, you probably won’t get comments on every post, let alone multiple comments per post, so it’s easy to respond to every comment.
As people begin leaving more comments, you can begin to respond to less comments. Eventually you’ll want to focus on responding to the best comments or refute the most inaccurate. Hoisting comments is a fantastic way to encourage people to leave thoughtful comments.
Many people complain that comments after blogs are often mean, banal or worse, and if that’s the case, blame the blog author. When comments devolve into a stream of banality, it’s because the blogger has actively chosen to allow a comment ghetto to take hold.
Take control of your comments section and you’ll be well on your way to building a strong community around your a blog. A strong community will drive traffic, make your blog a better product and help you find more topics to blog about.