Your business steers many resources toward its blog and social media platform, but it’s not getting the feedback and interaction it banked on. Let’s assume you’ve got plenty of traffic—an essential for interaction—but your posts simply aren’t generating comments. Don’t dismay and don’t give up the ship. By continuing to attract followers and adhering to these cricket-busting tips, you can encourage more comments and interactions from your traffic base and banish those crickets for good.
Are You Being Human?
Using a company-branded voice, quite frankly, has an omniscient quality that could be deterring readers from commenting. Let your readers know you’re human and not merely some nameless company entity that handles the Twitter or Facebook account. Who are you? Readers will be better able to connect when they feel that their interaction is with a human being and not a generic business voice.
Ask Questions
Although you may think that your blogs and social media posts invite comments, you might need to take a more direct approach and ask questions or even, if it comes down to it, ask for comments. Let’s say you’re an energy company and you frequently publish helpful informative blogs for your readership like how they can save money on energy bills during the winter. Try a variation on the topic and come out and ask your readership to share what they do to save money on energy costs. In the meantime, you can link back to that old post on the topic while generating some lively discussion.
Try a Content Makeover
No one wants to think their content is boring, but we’ve all snored—or scrolled quickly—through unexciting blog entries (certainly not this one) and social media posts. By making over your content, you could elicit more responses from your readership. How do you do this? You could (get ready for a shameless plug) hire a professional writer to revamp your content for you. A fresh voice could add more color and excitement to your entries. You could create more interest by inserting anecdotes into the content and avoiding topics that are overtly dry.
Be Opinionated
While there are a number of bloggers out there who will advise other bloggers to be controversial to elicit comments, that’s not always possible for businesses that don’t want to alienate anyone. Even so, if your blogs routinely lack opinion, they begin to sound like company speak—a homogenized chunk of text that has had all its metaphorical teeth removed by multiple company censors so that it reads more like a manual and less like a personable conversation starter. There’s nothing overtly wrong in stating an opinion about topics within the sphere of your company—provided you’re tactful.
Comment Back
When your blog or social media posts do receive comments, it’s important to comment back. Discussion is a give and take process, so you have to reward interaction with more interaction. Moreover, people actually appreciate when they’re comment has been read and generates a real response from the post’s author.
If you can incorporate these tips into your blogging and social media platform, you’re likely to stir up more conversation. Remember, too, that generating traffic is key, so ensure that you continually build your readership with timely posts filled with meaningful content.
