What to write to increase comments count on my articles?

Hello and happy new year to you,

I'd like to pick your brain about a topic that is bothering me a little, that is how to increase the number of comments on my articles? I know that you can direct people, prompt them to take action by using specific language and action words.

On the CMS I use (Drupal) the sentence before the comment box is simple, like "Comments" something very simple just to indicate that the commenting comes next. I've switched to a long sentence I have noticed that the frequence of comments both from members and visitors has slightly increased, but I also had some negative comments about the wording, like begging for comments...

Here's what I have now:

"
WRITE YOUR MESSAGE HERE - Saying something - anything - to the creator of this page is actually good behavior. Please do not leave this page without sending a message... It feels good to say what we have on our mind sometimes, try it! It doesn't even have to be relevant to the topic of this page, you can open your heart to us, do it now. Please, pretty please?
"

Now, what would you recommend to do? Simplify this sentence? Make it longer? Shorter? More serious? Even more casual/funny?
And what have you done yourself that you saw brought good results?

Cheers,
James

 

I do not think those little short sentence will convince much for visitors to leave their comments. The better way is creating a topic that attractive enough, the hardest way of course. However it won't be that hard if you have readership enough. A topic might be about compare two big companies in your niche, or critic on some big will known events related to your industry.

 

Thank you for your feedback.
I have to specify something of importance it is that my articles are indeed not written by myself. I run several sites where members write the articles, so I can't be specific to the topic of the articles.

If I were to write the articles myself, I could end them with a question to the readers, a question inviting them to react to the article, I have seen it works on blogs who do this on every post.

I need to find a generic sentence to put at the end of each articles that would invite readers to react in the comments.

I hear your critic about the childish/begging nature of my current sentences.

Perhaps something lighter such as:

"Your opinion is important to me. What do you think I am missing here? Please leave your message below..."

?

 

4 ways :
- better article quality
- red hot controversial subject whit cliffhanger endings and questions like : What do you folks think ?
- graphically enhance the comment posting area so it will jump up
- contests , best comment wins : a 6 pack , a free pizza some other small but nice thing .

 

You cannot expect your visitors to click on your links and buy what you sell if they got here because of your high ranking in the SERP to then realize that this content, and thus website itself is bad material. They need to have interest in the content, create a desire of exploring some more before they will click anywhere and generate you some income. If the content isn't high enough for their standard they will Bounce off your website within 5 seconds. Creating good content is one of the most important thing that you will ever have to do online.

Commenting is the same, you need to grasp the attention of the reader, and also make them want to communicate to you.
Make sure they know who is writing the article, commenters often search for your approval or want to ask questions.

Hope this will help you SXperm

 

thanks for your suggestions, keep them coming if anybody else has other ideas.
For now I've changed the sentence to:
"YOUR OPINION IS IMPORTANT TO ME... What do you think I am missing here? Please leave your message below:"

 

Change it to: YOU ARE IMPORTANT.... Please take a moment to speak your mind by leaving a comment... WE VALUE YOUR OPINION VERY MUCH.

 

That's nice Alfonso thanks

 

Hi James!
This is a really good idea – I confess that I didn't think of it myself although as a professional writer who studied psycholinguistics I should have. As for the specific wording:
In general it's bad policy to use aggressive marketing tactics because it gives the reader unpleasant feelings. In the long run you want your reader to come back to your blog on a regular basis, therefore you should make him feel comfortable.
"WRITE YOUR MESSAGE HERE" – This sounds better: "We would love to receive your feedback – you are most welcome to leave your message here".

"Saying something - anything - to the creator of this page is actually good behavior." – this is preaching and gets peoples' backs up.

"Please do not leave this page without sending a message..." – this is too pushy.

"It feels good to say what we have on our mind sometimes, try it! It doesn't even have to be relevant to the topic of this page, you can open your heart to us, do it now. Please, pretty please?" – This sounds like a school teacher urging on uncooperative kids to do their assignment.

 

Alfonso – your suggestion is a true winner! Thanks for the imput; I'll use your phrase myself. I can see that you are a professional copywriter. The friendly undertone of your text will encourage people who usually can't be bothered to comment, to take the time to write something. Thanks for sharing!

 

Thank you for your great tips – I'll adopt them myself. As for the graphic enhancement of the comments area – care should be taken not to overdo the graphics because it's in many cases counterproductive. The idea for contests is a good one – contests always work because people need to be motivated with a challenge.

 

you can't ask peoples to make comment on your articles... making comments are wish of peoples,, if your article is what peoples want then they will comment... try to write "post your feedback in comments" then and there...

 

Without a doubt, the most effective way to get more comments on your site is to reply to each and every comment intelligently, no matter how poorly it is written. When people see they can engage you simply by replying in a comment, they will be much more likely to do it in the future.

 

Do follow comment links will fuel the discussion...but make spam increase as well.

 

The sentence you have now doesn't sound natural at all. Fixing that, and then improving your articles to make them sound natural (like your talking to the reader), will help. For example, I can tell that sentence to draw comments was definitely not written by a native writer (and if it was, they should go back to school). If you want to create a place where discussion is encouraged, I would hire a native writer to write decent articles (and quality writers don't come cheap... expect to pay $.03 - $.04 cents per word if you want a quality writer, and not the $.01 that many non-native writers - yet claim to be - are going for on DP). Anyway, despite my rant, just improve your writing quality and you'll do fine!

 

Our writing or posting should be such, that people on their own feel like giving some comment. See my blog- www.freebesthealth.com. Now I worried about how to approve or acknlwledge so many comments pouring in on my postings on the blog.

 

Informative article can be attract more visitors after then visitors can give comment on article. good content can be helpful for both side like user and search engine

 

A call to action

 

This is funny, but I see that females get many more comments than males do. So if you can be a female, you will get more play!

 

The best way is to make your comment dofollow and then make sure you contact dofollow blog lists to let them know that your comments are dofollow. You'll get a lot of spam, but you'll get a lot of comments. You can moderate to reduce the spam but you've got to figure out whether the additional work is worth the benefit of the additional comments.