Today’s video is all about increasing comments on your blog.

Here you can see the daily number of comments that the blog is receiving, and on some days it’s approaching 180, nearly 200 comments a day. So that’s pretty good.

And the reason I’m using Disqus instead of the default WordPress commenting system is because it gives me awesome analytics like this so I can clearly see what’s working on my site. But if you know of a system that does this better, please do let me know, because Disqus only keeps the data for one year.

So the numbers look pretty good, we’ve got traffic coming to the blog, people are engaging with the content and commenting on the articles. It’s looking pretty good. So. how did we do this?

I’m going to show you.

I’m going to give you 3 strategies that work, that you can implement on your blog right now, to increase your comments. Right, let’s get started.

Controversy

The first tip I’ve got for you is; Use controversy. I know it’s a scary thought, you don’t want to offend people, you don’t want to annoy people. I get that. But on the flip side, when you say the things that other people are thinking, you give them a voice, you validate them. And they align themselves with you, and your brand – often quite deeply, and you become their champion.

But you gotta do this in the right way, ok. Don’t start picking on people in an attempt to create controversy. In fact, it’s probably better to just attack an idea, or a value, instead of an individual. So attack the thing that somebody stands for.

For example, in the digital marketing niche, I frequently attack the ‘something for nothing’ mentality that a lot of marketers try to promote. I think it’s absolutely disgusting that some marketers celebrate laziness, and trick people into starting businesses that don’t deliver value or improve people’s lives in some way.

I’ll save that rant for another time. But find your opinion on something and stick to your guns.

Another important thing to understand about controversy is, you have to do your research.

You gotta know the facts, and if you can, use data to support your argument. Make sure you’re well armed before you go into battle.

Ask your list

Ok tip number 2; Ask your email list. If there’s one thing every blog needs, it’s a way to collect email addresses. You can have an empty blog post with a single opt-in form and it’s still more valuable to your business than a 2,000-word article. That’s because there is nothing more valuable to your business than your mailing list.

Every time you publish a new post, you just hit the send button and tell your email subscribers.

Give them a good reason to open your email. Then give them 3 good reasons to click on the link to your post and then ASK them to comment. It’s a simple as that. People need to be