Design credit: Nina of Nina Reads
Armchair
BEA: Day Five: The Future of Book Blogging
I
have thoroughly enjoyed participating in Armchair BEA this week; I have met
some wonderful new bloggers and have learnt a few new things as well.
Today's topic is Ask The Experts. In your post,
ask the visitors to your blog for blogging advice. What did you always want to
know about blogging but were afraid to ask? Now is the time!
I
have listed just a few of my tips, although I am by no means an expert.
- Be visible & utilize social media – Twitter, Goodreads, Facebook etc. follow your blogging friends, favorite authors, publishers - It’s not only a great way to learn about new releases but also new authors and our fellow bloggers.
- To gain more followers and to learn about other blogs, host giveaways or participate in a few memes, it doesn’t have to be a regular thing but I think it really helps. A few memes I love are Waiting on Wednesday hosted by Breaking the Spine & Feature & Follow Friday hosted by Parajunkee and Alison Can Read. I am a Reader Not a Writer hosts some wonderful themed giveaway hops.
- If you are keen to receive ARC’s, contact publishers to put your name on their ARC list, Netgalley is also fantastic as are blog tours!
- Blog because you love blogging, be consistent and inviting and write from your heart.
My question
– I seem to get the traffic flow based on my blog stats but the comments are
few – does anyone else find this? How do you encourage your readers to post
comments, do you try to engage them in any way through discussion?
I think views rather than comments are always a problem. I know what somes sites there really isn't an option for a self hosted blog to comment to I have to skip it. There are plenty of people that read and not comment and I wish I knew how to stop that.
ReplyDeleteTaking part in memes is an excellent piece of advice!
ReplyDeleteI have a new blog and was just wondering on the views vs comments myself - I think it must be common to us all!
Do you have a way of looking and seeing which posts get the most comments? In my experience, people are more likely to comment on a meme post or personal post rather than book reviews, and here's why - unless the reader has already read the book, they don't have much to say to a review other than "It sounds interesting" and that gets old.
ReplyDeleteIf you want more comments on review posts, I recommend being very expressive - gush about it, be funny, be angry, but make it stand out.
Maybe you can create a poll or survey to ask your readers specifically what they would like to see on your blog?
Hope all this helps! Happy end-of-ABEA!
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI receive most of my comments from bloggers I befriend in GoodReads or I write comment regularly at. I usually comment on blog reviews so that's probably why I receive many comments on my reviews.
A meme that I love that you can check out if you want is Blogspiration hosted by Saz101 and Growing Up YA- its an amazing and fun meme!
Great Tips! I also feel consistency is the key.
Also, it would be wise to turn off Captcha. go to settings, posts and comments, under word verification press no then press save changes on top.
ReplyDeleteBlog stats can be misleading. I noticed my daily hits going way up, but when I looked closer, a huge percentage were image searches - people that didn't actually stop to read, they were just looking for a picture (probably to put on their own blog). So I've quit looking at stats (mostly). The best way I've found to get comments is to comment on other blogs and respond to every comment you get. When people feel welcome and special, they'll come back.
ReplyDeleteHope you had a great ArmchairBEA
Comments are a pretty rare these days..I have no idea too. Maybe with all the blogs now they are like speed reading. :p Try turning off your captcha or word verification.
ReplyDeleteDropping by from Armchair BEA!
-Len of Musings of a Reader Happy
Great tips! I have no idea how you could encourage readers to comment. Asking a lot of questions in your posts may help, since people always feel they have an answer for them.
ReplyDeleteI'm new to blogging as well. I've seen a lot of Parajunkee's Blogging Tips 101 that have been helpful. She also said like the others comment back to everyone that comments to you. Make it more personal. For the most part I've gotten quite a few comments, which isn't a concern for me at this point. Captcha is definitely one, that drives me NUTS!
ReplyDeleteI agree that commenting on other blogs brings the comment love to your blog. I've noticed that it depends on the post as to the amount of comments I get.
ReplyDeleteI have removed the captcha from my comments. Blogger has a pretty good filter build-in and I can always delete things I find. It's been a while since I did this and I haven't had a problem. Captcha takes longer in the commenting process and some comments may never happen when peeps see they have to type in those strange letters to leave it. Just a thought.
Thanks for participating!
Here's my experts say post
Valerie
StuckInBooks
I try to comment on anyone's reviews who do the same for me. I do tend to stay away from reviews of books I haven't read yet though, except for maybe the first 2 I see. I am always afraid of spoilers.
ReplyDeleteWaiting on Wednesday is my favorite meme. :)
My BEA post
Keep at it and I wouldn't let the lack of commenting on reviews bother you all that much. Think about it from the commenters perspective, it be really hard to come up with something original to say if they have zero experience with the book.
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that if I really have fun with the review and be personable within it, I get more comments. If I tend to be more cut and dry- Here is the book, the blub, and I enjoyed it- sort of reviews don't leave much room for a response.
And I agree with the others, lose the Captcha.
I tend to get a decent number of comments considering my followers and page views (of course, I would always like more!), and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I always put a lot of effort and thought into my posts, even my memes, and I'll admit - I tend to be long-winded. So people have lots of things they could comment on!
ReplyDeleteAnd if you would like to increase comments, maybe turn off Captcha and turn on comment moderation. That makes it easy for people to comment, but you can still weed out spam.
Great post! Thanks for stopping by my Armchair BEA Ask the Experts post.
I used to obsess over stats and comments. And then almost overnight I remembered that I hadn't started that blog to try to get to a certain number of viewers, I did it for me. I find that the more I comment on other blogs, the more comments I get. I know that people that don't have blogs are very unlikely to leave comments because it's hard to figure out how to. So I wouldn't get too worried about those two numbers not matching up.
ReplyDeleteI find I get comments when I do a video review. People like seeing your reactions in person nyou also hafta consider that your reach is not just comments. It's tweet conversations and Facebook discussions about the book as well.
ReplyDelete