Interaction – The Dos and the Don’ts: Blogging Tips #6

A feature in which I share my dubious blogging wisdom with you.

Welcome back to the Blogging Tips feature! In this edition, we’ll talk about interaction online – comments, self-promotion and building your reader base! It can be difficult to navigate the world of blogging as a fresh new blogger, so we’re gonna talk a bit about how you should (and shouldn’t) approach the whole interaction deal.

This post was inspired by a comment I got, and the poll I ran that followed it. Basically, a person commented on my social media with “Great post! Check out my page where I did this/that”. I am a bit iffy about those kinds of comments. I’ll get into it more, but here are the results of my poll:

 

So most bloggers don’t enjoy that sort of comments. Why is that? Are they just stuck up and don’t want to help new bloggers (spoilers: it’s not). What is it all about? And how should you approach self promotion if not by comments like that? Let’s talk about it.

The most important thing when you first start blogging is to be noticed. And how do you do that? You follow other people and comment on their posts. Interaction is key to you building a follower base. Find some wonderful blogs that you actually enjoy, follow them, check out their posts and leave some nice comments.

I find comments with just Nice Post! Check out my blog! to be really pushy and obnoxious. Mostly because it feels like you did not read my post at all. It feels like you just hopped on there to get me to check out your blog, without returning the favor yourself. When you put so much hard work into your posts, it can be really disheartening to see someone just leave a comment to promote themselves without ever taking an interest to my content. So how should you get them to look at your blog?

I find that I will always go check out and follow someone’s blog if they keep popping up on my radar. People who tend to leave me multiple comments (all of them just focused on the posts I do) will almost always get a follow back for me (I say almost because sometimes I miss someone, and that’s unfortunate). If I keep seeing your name in my notification box, and we keep talking via comments, I will instantly feel like you appreciate what I do, so I would want to appreciate your content back. It’s how it goes. Keep commenting on people’s post, be engaging and they will most definitely follow you back.

There are a lot of people who just like my posts automatically without ever commenting. I realize that not everything warrants a comment, and that’s fine, but if someone NEVER EVER comments on your posts, and just keeps liking them – they probably don’t read them. So if you want someone to notice you, you’re gonna have to interact via comments eventually.

When you’re first starting out, you can fall into the hole of writing solely reviews. Reviews don’t get you a lot of views, mostly because they don’t stimulate interaction. If you want people to engage with your content and comment on your posts, you have to create content that sparks conversations. Discussions are great for getting people talking and eventually coming back to your blog.

I find that people sometimes overdo discussion posts. What I mean is that they fall into the trap of creating discussions that are overdone and worn out. You don’t have to have only discussions on your blog. You can make lists, recommendations etc. which will still gain views and get people involved. You can even write exciting reviews (a wonderful recent example by Sydney @ Fire and Rain Books) that will get people involved and talking. The key is to keep your content fresh and versatile, so people will want to interact with you.

So how should you approach comments and interaction? As with anything else in life – with taste. Commenting on people’s blogs is essential to building your follower base. However, I find that if you want someone to notice you, you should be nice, talk about their posts and not yourself and repeat that. I guarantee that this will get you on other people’s radar. Also, keep posting content that will make people come back and comment.

I’d love to hear from you! Do you have any tips of your own when it comes to interaction? How do you feel about self promoting comments? Let me know!

xxx

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