Getting Visitors Involved

Many clients wonder if all their effort is worth the investment. A recent DevLounge article looks at how to get visitors involved in your community-building efforts:

“As an author, you always want to hear from the audience and get their response to what you’re saying. Did it make any sense to them at all? Was the piece helpful, or just a waste of five minutes of reading? Comments help authors determine what they’re doing wrong, how they can correct things, and how they can improve their writing style to better the connection to their audience.”

“Like artists (musicians) without a crowd listening to what the artist is producing, there would be little reason to be playing. Imagine drumming your heart out on stage, only to see a motionless audience watching you, without even the slightest body motion. Did you skip a beat? Do you just overall suck? What could possibly be wrong?”

“The truth is, response is almost as critical the actual piece itself. An blog author without comments is like a dog without a bone – pissed off and laying down in the corner.”

• Leave in some openness: Some people tend to forget how open-endedness can really help a posts response. Add in questions that get visitors to think and form logical responses. If you’re dealing with a controversial topic or one that has multiple solutions, once some visitors start voicing their opinions, others will get involved with their own responses. (…)
• Join In: No matter how many comments an article may have, either a lot or a little, make sure you’re getting involved in the response as well. A lot of times people will ask me questions about “how to do this” or “is this possible” in relation to my multi-article Wordpress customization guides. (…)
• You Comment Mine, I’ll Comment Yours: I heard that commenting on others peoples blogs will also help you turn in the comments yourself. I haven’t had much success with this, as I’ve commented on many other peoples blogs but have not received the same response back. (…)
• Design Matters: Site design also plays a big part in harvesting comments. If a design is poorly put together, you can expect visitors to not waste much time trying to figure out how or where to go to leave a comment. Make it easier for them by inserting skip to comment links at the top of articles, and dedicating a clear place for responses either at the top, bottom, or sides of posts. (…)
• Articles + Response = Happy You: In the end if you’re successful with getting visitors to respond to your posts, you’ll feel much better about hitting that publish button, and you’ll probably find yourself doing it a lot more. Make a personal connection with your visitors, and give them something to talk about. (…)

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