By Joan Stewart
One of the biggest frustrations of blogging is seeing too few comments at your blog—or no comments.
Here’s one way to encourage comments. Don’t require people to first log in.
Because I’ve created Google Alerts for my Publicity Hound website URL and my name, Google alerted me this morning to a blog post someone had written about me, with a link back to my website. Love it!
I wanted to post a comment and leave one or two more tips for her readers. But then I saw that her blog requires me to sign in first. I couldn’t remember my Google or WordPress passwords. I was in a hurry. So I guessed incorrectly.
Finally, I became so frustrated I just left. What a missed opportunity!
I see this mistake repeatedly on blogs that use Google’s Blogger platform. Here’s an explanation of various options you can give your visitors when theycome to your Blogger blog.
Different platforms handle this differently. My partner, Jeanne Hurlbert, and I use WordPress for this blog and I use it for my own blog. WordPress doesn’t make a commenter do anything more than type their comment, name, email address and URL.
A few weeks ago, blogging expert Patsi Krakoff was my guest expert during a teleseminar on Time-saving Tips for Smart Business Blogging. Patsi says requiring people to log in before commenting drives her nuts, too:
“Lord knows it’s hard enough to build up enough traffic and get comments. Only 1 to 2 percent of blog readers will leave a comment, it’s estimated. So why would you want to scare someone away? Or worse, just frustrate the hell out of ’em and waste their time? Good way to ensure they never come back.”
Because I know the blogger in question is one of my loyal readers, I emailed her and told her about the problem. She fixed it immediately and thanked me profusely.
Now, I’m headed back over to her blog to comment.
Other bloggers won’t be as lucky.
If it’s a significant hassle to comment on a blog, I don’t do it. I let anyone post on my blogs, and Akismet does an excellent job of filtering out the spam.
John, I use Akismet too and love it, but some spam comments sneak their way into the blog. That’s why I always moderate comments. Comments don’t show up in the blog unless I sign off on them.
I walk away from a blog that asks me to login to post a comment. I don’t have time to set up an account, let alone comment sometimes.
I have a blog as well and anyone can comment, but the comments are moderated as well.
I agree. I check in on several design blogs and most of them use blogger. What a pain to log in every time I want to make a quick comment. I even had to change my username/password a couple of weeks ago, only to find out the password wouldn’t work again today! What’s the big deal with signing in?