While I normally write about all kinds of travel-related topics (like uncovering hidden gems most people haven’t even heard of and posting a plethora of high-resolution photos) over at Byteful Travel, I’ve been meaning to write something specifically for the ComLuv community for a while now. When I first heard that Andy was making guest posting an option, I thought that was pretty cool, but I wasn’t going to submit anything unless I knew that I had something truly pertinent to share with you all. And today I’m very excited to share with you something extremely pertinent: a subtle yet very powerful insight about audience engagement that you can put into action today.
To be painfully honest, this article has been simmering in my head for probably a month now, but the time to write it never felt right, until now. In fact, about 3 minutes ago, I was rinsing some brown rice and prepping the rice cooker. And now I’m sitting here in front of my Mac typing like a crazyperson.
Let’s begin with the Big Question
Are you doing everything you can to engage and interact with your audience?
Like you probably have already, I’d installed ComLuv and had it running on my site for a few years now. And it was (and is) fantastic! I saw my commenting increase, and it even seemed like the mere presence of ComLuv left my visitors in a better mood, too. (Perhaps because they knew commenting on my site would reap more rewards than on a site without ComLuv.) Indeed, ComLuv is, in the immortal words of that hilarious Don King impersonator on Conan, truly splendubious. (go 2 minutes into the video and you’ll see what I mean 
)
But CommentLuv alone wasn’t enough.
Missing out on a Huge Opportunity
This year, I took a long hard look at how my site Byteful Travel was actually being used. I realized that, though ComLuv was running smoothly and certainly helped, I was missing out on another ginormous opportunity to encourage my readers to comment. After really empathizing with my readers and putting myself in their shoes, I realized that I’d overlooked a key aspect in how people actually behave on real websites.
You see, I use a really clean and polished theme for WordPress called K2 (which I love), but I realized that I hadn’t done a good job of configuring K2 to encourage comments. Here was the problem: if you were on Byteful Travel’s main page earlier this year, the only way to comment on an entry was to either:
A. Click the title of the article to get to the article’s page itself and then scroll down to comment.
or
B. Click the word “comments” under the title. (the text is tiny at 11 pixels high)
Not exactly urging people on, was it? I mean, who’s going to click on the title of the post if they can already see the entire post on the main page? And not many people are going to be looking for a small comment indicator under the title itself.
ComLuv is a great way to encourage commenting, but how can it help if your readers have troubling finding your comment form in the first place?
Placement is Everything
I knew that in order to encourage the everyday reader to start commenting, I had to put a reminder to comment at the bottom of each article. Putting a comment indicator on the top might look aesthetically pleasing and result in a clean layout, but it is simply not an easy way for people to comment.
So I had to dive in.
Luckily, I didn’t have to dive in nearly as deep as the time I added the print button (which is an entirely different and rather crazy story); but I did get to play with variables. And aren’t variables fun? 
Here’s what I did:
I logged into my WordPress back-end, clicked on “Appearance”, and clicked on “K2 Options”. (Your theme will most-likely have a similarly-named page to setup its settings.)- I scrolled down to “Post Entry” and below it were a field called “Top Meta” and a field called “Bottom Meta”. Clearly these text boxes set how the meta information (like the comment indicator, for instance) would appear at the top and the bottom of each entry.
- After experimenting a while, I settled on changing my “Bottom Meta” tags to:
Currently %comments% — But what do you think?
Note: If you’re a stylesheet freak like me and you’re comfortable with PHP, you may also want to open up your single.php and loop.php files, find the “entry_meta” php tag, and wrap that tag in a new style class. That way you can set this new “Comment Encourager” any color or style that you want. (If none of that made sense, don’t worry about it. It’s just for style freaks. This tip works great either way.)
Voila!
That wasn’t too hard, was it? Now when anyone visits my page, a short reminder to comment is placed at the bottom of each article, whether they’re on the front page or on an article page. Placing “Currently X Comments — But what do you think?” at the bottom of each article makes it much easier (not to mention much more straightforward) for people to leave comments on Byteful Travel since the word “comments” is a link right to the comment form, so it’s easy as cake.
When you do a lot of webwork, you may forget that not everyone is as web savvy as you. I know because I fall into that trap from time to time. And while any web savvy person could figure out how to comment even without this change, putting a comment link at the bottom of an article is the easiest way for an average reader to figure out what to do next, so it makes a huge difference. You can even include a little message to encourage people to comment as I have. The main lesson here is that it’s absolutely paramount that you consider how “normal” human beings are going to use your site. Once you understand that, you can figure out how to encourage them to participate in a very natural way.
Obviously this isn’t rocket science, but combined with ComLuv, this technique is the best way to encourage commenting that I know of. And of course, you can see all of this in action, as well as join me on my adventures around the world, over at Byteful Travel.
Any questions or concerns? Please feel free.
Twitter: lavenderuses
says:
Hi B.Traveller
I am definitely not tech-savvie so thanks for the clear explanation of how you placed your comments on your blog.
Like the idea of making it easier to add a comment to your posts. Always a good idea to have things easy to navigate if you want any kind of response. I am going to have a look at a few of my favourite blogs and see how they do it. Mine is at the top of my post at the moment.
Although I get a lot of comments on my blog; making it easy for new visitors to join in the conversation is always a plus. Tthanks for sharing this with us. Much appreciated.
Patricia Perth Australia
Patricia´s recent blog post ..Are You a Tweetheart-Commenter…or both!
Twitter: Bytefulcom
says:
You’re very welcome, Patricia!
I do what I can do explain what I do concisely and cleary, and navigation is pretty darn important. It’s also worth mentioning that not all layouts require a comment reminder at the bottom of each article. Those that only feature a snippet of the article don’t really need a comment reminder since readers would have to go to the article page to finish reading, and therefore see the comment form when they’re done reading.
But when an entire post is shown on the front page (where there are no comment forms), this tip is incredibly important.
And actually, including the “comment reminder” link at the bottom of an article on each article page (you know, the pages with the comment forms) is also helpful because sometimes articles end up with a lot of stuff after the article but before the comment form, such as Related Articles or ads. Putting a comment reminder right after the ShareThis buttons makes navigation much faster.
Byteful Traveller´s recent blog post ..Portland’s Lan Su Classical Chinese Garden transports you across Time and Space
Twitter: estavamorioka
says:
Great post. Thanks for sharing this info. I will have to play around with this. I dont really know much PHP but I’m sure that I can figure it out. Again, Thanks!
I think one of the best ways to encourage engagement is to respond to commenters personally. I can’t say that I am an expert at it but I do notice that when I comment on someone’s blog and they take the time to respond to me, it makes me want to go back to their blog and comment again.
colormyworld´s recent blog post ..New Series on Dog Breeds Coloring Pages Starting with Afghan Hound
Twitter: SeriouslyRS
says:
I agree with colormyworld. I always try to respond to each individual comment within a day or less of posting, to let people know I read every single comment and value every one.
Then again, I don’t get more than 20 comments per post, so it is easy for me to do that as opposed to a blogger who gets hundreds of comments.
I’ve also realized that many people just enjoy lurking in the shadows. Some friends have said they can’t think of anything funny to write, so they make no comment at all. It’s tough – usually other bloggers leave the majority of my comments.
Stephanie´s recent blog post ..Top 11 Tips- Become An Awesome Winter Driver
I saw my comment message in the php code the other day and thought to myself…hmmm I will come back and change that…now you have just reminded me. I am happy to see you have tested it though… Thanks for your article. It has just given me a nudge to do it NOW!
Mitz Pantic´s recent blog post ..How to get views on youtube and encourage website traffic
Placement IS everything. I could not agree more. Thanks for the K2 link – i am looking for a new theme for my blog and will check it out!
ComLuv has been one of the best plugins for my blog – I have been getting much more traffic and comments with it. Its truly one of the best plugins
zoopco´s recent blog post ..Make Money With World Of Warcraft Cataclysm
Twitter: Bytefulcom
says:
Wow! I was starting to think everyone was too busy with December-related stuff to even read the article, let alone leave comments. Thank you all so much! The feedback means more than I can say. It’s so encouraging to hear that the time I put into this article is actually resulting in some positive action in the community.
@Estava
You’re very welcome!
@Colormyworld
Excellent point, colormyworld. Being responsive is definitely encouraging to prospective commenters.
@Mitz
You’re very welcome. I’m pleased that this article encouraged you!
@zoopco
Yeah K2 has been the theme of choice for Byteful.com since the beginning. I love how clean it is, and it’s not difficult to customize either. It has a lot of features that I don’t use, as well. One of which being it’s very snazzy ajax-based search function. But I prefer google’s search service because it’s more powerful.
Byteful Traveller´s recent blog post ..How I met Merlin Mann by following my Intuition
Good job, I dont know anything about php development but i think we can also have different texts for posts with different amount of comments.
If 0 comments = Currently 0 comments, be the first to comment!
if 0 < #of comments = Currently X comment, — But what do you think?
Greg Stallworth´s recent blog post ..Glossary of Plumbing Terms
Twitter: thabrewclub
says:
Nice. I think comment luv has helped, but easy access to the commenting is a good idea I hadn’t thought of!
Scott´s recent blog post ..Anchor Christmas Ale
Twitter: Bytefulcom
says:
That’s a great idea, Greg.
But I’m quite certain the theme wouldn’t allow php code to be inserted into the meta box that I picture above. You’d have to hack some of the php code within the theme files itself.
If any knows how to do that, I’m certainly open to experimenting.
Perhaps Andy would know?
Byteful Traveller´s recent blog post ..Byteful Travel Blog Carnival 4 – 2010 Dec 14
Twitter: dgupta5150
says:
Thanks for putting this together. I have been trying to comment for the last 10 hours on this, but keep getting interrupted . . . .:) Anyway, a good blogger should always go and comment meaningful items on other blogs (preferably with commentLuv installed). It encourages two way dialogue and community building. Sorry had to write in less than 45 seconds.
Deepak Gupta´s recent blog post ..A Connector’s World – Connecting and Kindness
Twitter: gjmarketer
says:
That’s a neat little tip. I guess the other thing you could do is simply ask people their opinion or what they think of the blog post as a way to prompt them to interact.
Gina´s recent blog post ..How To Leave Blog Comments To Get The Most Link Juice