Walk into a coffee shop today, and look at their counters. You will find that there will be a tip jar left out. Studies have indicated that an empty tip jar will not get much money. Individuals aren’t quick to give straightway. However, if there is some change, including bills in the jar, people are more willing to give. That notion plays out online a great deal, especially when you consider blog comments. There are a lot of different opinions on the matter and while some of them may seem easy to define, there’s a larger element at play, especially when you are dealing with web hosts and the likes. Web hosts aren’t so quick to instruct individuals as to how to get the most out of their packages, but it’s something that should be highlighted from time to time.
The Content Management Issue
First and foremost, when setting up a blog, you need content management. Without this framework in place, web hosts are more akin to real estate agents. Think about web hosts in terms of property. They will rent you a digital landscape, and it’s up to you to build your website. You will find few hosts that are going to give you everything up front. As you sign up with web hosts today, you will want to look into installing a content management system. That means that you will need some sort of software package to ensure that you are able to update your pages. The most common of course is WordPress, but you can find others. If your web host doesn’t have this in place, or at least allows you to host this with database connections, you are going to have a hard time moving through the tips mentioned below.
The Content
Once you have software in place, you will need to work on your content. No web hosts today are going to give you this. They will give you a tool box of digital elements, but they are not going to build this for you. Many people get upset as to the complications that can arise after signing up with a hosting plan. When you sign up with any given host, you are not going to be given a folder with unique content to upload. You are going to have to come up with it, and that in there lies the problem. Content can mean any of 15 different types of elements. From text updates to images and beyond. No matter what you look into, you are going to end up finding yourself swimming in issues if you do not cycle through content updates. There are no web hosts that do this for you.
To The Comments
Once you establish your site with a content management system, your content in place, and you are steadily gaining traffic you need to look at how you manage your comments. You may not initially get any comments. Again, web hosts aren’t responsible for this, so you’re going to have to figure out a plan to get more engagement. The easiest way to do this is to look at your blogging software and see whether or not you have comments turned on. If they are turned on, you will then need to figure out security measures to ensure spam is not a problem. After that, you will simply need to sit back and see if anyone bites. In order to get the ball rolling, you may have to drop a comment yourself.
Go back to the analogy of the tip jar for a moment. Just like tip jars don’t get a lot of traction unless someone has placed a bill or some change inside of it, you will need to start the ball rolling with comments. That means that you will need to either hire someone to drop comments, or perhaps leave a comment on your own. The goal here is to ensure that you are sending the message of engagement. The end user will see whether or not you have comments in place, and will read them, reply and then move on. Without any comments across a large portion of your blog, you will not get any interaction.
Incentivize Comments
One of the tried and true ways that webmasters have been able to get more comments on blogs is through incentives. You can incentivize your comments section by simply rewarding the top comments. You can have a monthly reward and promote that across your page. Of course, you will need to watch out for spam, but that’s another problem altogether. As you look at many web hosts, make sure that you have a clearly defined plan as to how you are going to set your blog up for success. If you do not see a host that has a good content management tool kit, you may start off on the wrong foot.
