Are You Losing Comments from Your Blog Subscribers?
Yeah you are, too — you just missed out on the great comment I wanted to leave on your latest post. In the past week I’ve noted an epidemic of missing “Add a Comment” links.
Nearly ALL the feeds I personally subscribe to are delivered by Feedburner, and even though I’m among the tech-savvy who “get” the Little Orange Buttons, like many of your readers, I prefer to receive new content via email delivery.
The specific feed delivery option is irrelevant — I am already a subscriber — the POINT is: I am loyally, eagerly following your blog and devouring your new content — and I’m NOT reading your latest posts ON your blog!
Not just as your blogging coach, but as one of your subscribers, let me explain to you what happens when I reach the end of an awesome post:
If your article draws me in, and I keep reading to the end, chances are pretty good that I have a thought to share or a potential comment. That brief moment when I arrive at the end of your latest blog post is when I am most likely to click the comments link…
Uh, if you have one. And, honestly, come on — WHY would you NOT?
Guess what happens when that “flare” is missing from your post delivery? I close the email, think “Oh, well, maybe I’ll go visit the blog again later, hunt down that post, and MAYBE I’ll remember what I wanted to say.”
But for now, it’s back to processing email — the priority, top-of-mind, front-and-center virtual workspace location, not only for me, but for the vast majority of your readers.
It’s Now or Never
Want to find me sitting at my desk, grab my attention, and engage me in your work? If you’re going to make that impact, it will be in my email account — for some it will be in a feedreader — and not because I’m going to stop what I’m doing and go blog hopping.
If you’re one of the blogs that I follow, and you’ve posted in the last two days, and you do NOT have a “Comments/Add a Comment” flare enabled on your RSS delivery — you missed out on my thoughtful reply.
Please — this is literally a personal request — and think of ALL the OTHER readers, subscribers, and commenters who have had the same impulse to visit and reply to your post, but passed on the moment because of one missing link… They may not know that there’s a call to action missing — they don’t even know to request it. But they’ll know what to do when presented with the invitation.
Give Me A Freakin One-Click Comment Action!
Go to your Feedburner Account > Choose the Optimize Tab > scroll down to the Flares, and check mark the box that will add the Comment Link to your feed.
Make it really completely as dead-simple as you possibly can for me to comment on your new posts — and I WILL. If you know what you want your reader to do, give him the handle — make it so that all he has to do is say Okay.
That’s ONE click away. Not two, not elsewhere on the web, not later. Not maybe. Right then, right in front of me, in the one place and time I am most likely to act.
Slade Roberson is an intuitive counselor, ATP®, professional blogger, and the author of Shift Your Spirits, Automatic Intuitive Response, and the PageCoach Problogging Tutorial Series. Slade on Blogging shares behind-the-screens internet marketing, self-publishing, and blogging strategies with other personal development writers, coaches, and healing arts practitioners.
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12 Responses to “Are You Losing Comments from Your Blog Subscribers?”
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Hi Slade, great stuff as usual. I can’t find the comments flare though, not even in the flares gallery. Was it part of your standard list?
One of the reasons I think a lot of Feedburner users miss this one is it is oddly titled “comments count.” When there are already comments, it lists the number, when there isn’t one yet, I believe the text changes to “add a comment.”
It’s the fourth flare listed on the standard list.
Be sure to check both the feed and the site display!
Do you recommend publishing a teaser in your feed, or the full text of the article?
I’ve got just the first paragraph of each article at the moment…
Thanks Slade! Oh by the way, can I purchase a blog review like you did for KL? How much?
KL,
Are you asking about publishing your feeds as full text articles as opposed to summaries?
I DO absolutely. With 77% of Shift Your Spirits readers consuming new articles by email, and with that posting schedule being not so frequent, email is where the reader prefers to consume the content.
Most people seem to agree about this. I am using a newer version of WordPress for Spiritual Blogging which defaults to the use of the more tag — which I do not like. It forces you to choose posting full length on your home page in order to get your feeds to reflect that.
Because I’m posting a little more frequently on this blog and the articles tend to be shorter I would prefer to have multiple headlines available on the front page. The subscriber incentive is a bigger deal for this blog as well — the free download in the footer of each feed. SO for now, I’m letting excerpts slide on this feed for the time being.
Full text feeds are ideal — they’ve already subscribed, give it to them where they want it — but if you’re using excerpts or your version picks of the more tag then work to make the Headline/Post Title of each article AND the opening paragraph as compelling as you possibly can to entice the reader to click through and read the rest of the post.
This is basic journalistic top-down story structure. Your opening paragraph or first sentence should be a real doozie in terms of drawing the reader in… This is why “Sorry, I haven’t blogged in awhile…” or rambling slowly into the point of a post without some promise of what’s coming up can kill your reader’s interest.
Albert,
I’d be honored to do a critique for you. For now, I’m going to leave the “pricetag” for this service in your hands by asking for a donation with the permission to share the critique as I did KL’s.
KL,
I have to go hunting for the syndication settings in WordPress (the setting in question seems a bit “buried” in the Dashboard):
You’ll find the full text/ summary options in:
>Options
>Reading Tab
Then scroll down…
Note: On newer versions of WordPress, there is a fineprint stating that use of the more tag will cut off posts in feeds.
KL, I just want to jump in and say that I wish you would publish full articles in your feeds.
–J
Slade, I love your site. I just love it.
You know, ladies, I am just ILL about the new version of WordPress “honoring” the more tag so explicitly.
I think there needs to be a feed-specific option, to over-ride or allow… I’m using Better Feed plug-in, which allows you to set that variable — but it apparently operated on the older version control.
The full feed / more tag issue is going to keep me from upgrading Shift Your Spirits…
KL, I’m gnawing on the possible strategic (low-level geekish) work-around. I think one way to get around it is to publish full feeds, use an alternate page for the home/index — either through the new widgetized choice of front page — or by slapping an additional home.php in your templates.
THEN redesign or beef up your home page content with headline feeds and most popular articles. You can deal with having a “1″ post per home page, so the front is always the most recent.
I’m thinking…
Hey guys..I’m not sure why you want to use the more tag? I publish full feeds, and I never use the more tag. If it’s for the categories, then I simply type in an optional excerpt, which can be found lost somewhere beneath all the different fields in the Write page. That puts a short excerpt for my categories and stuff.
KL is using the more tag in the same way I am using it here, to display multiple recent posts on the home page.
My individual entries are long and I want the index to show a sampling of recent posts in the front page loop.
Hmmm… not sure what to do with this yet. I do want full text feeds… but also a simple solution! For now, will have to put up with partial feeds. Sorry CGDotNet!