Hi all, I operate a local entertainment and news blog and I get about 1000 page views daily. The current means of traffic for now is twitter. I spend time to ensure that I provide quality information and people get to visit the site but my problem is, people do not comment after reading. I believe that when people begin to comment, it tends to increase the perception of the site. Sometimes, when I post an engaging question to get them to comment, the comment is usually on twitter. The only time I could get people to comment on the blog was when there was an incentive and I got loads of comments What can I do to increase the engagement on the site so that people can comment naturally without any form of bribe. Thank you
Maybe you are doing a lot of stuff on Twitter since it's your main traffic source. Try to be less engagement there so they can post on your blog. If some incentives work, keep doing it because once they get used to be active on your blog they will keep posting. Focus on your incentives and engage with them all you can, they will get used to leave a comment but what you need to do is make some contacts with others blogs on your niche, add value to some of their post and engage with their users and leave a link to your blog if possible after leaving a really helpful advice to complement the original post. Another idea is to add a twitter widget on each post, people will post more if they see other activity if it's everything empty people don't want to be the first posting something.
Have you tired using disqus? Perhaps even Facebook comments as you're doing local you'll probably stand a better chance of encouraging people to engage with you and with each other over your content
It has been said that 99% of visitors to a website will never comment. Perhaps you could make a few comments yourself to get thing started. Something that will push people's buttons, excite their interest, or get them mad so they will encouraged to comment.