On Monday we talked about 10 ways that you can increase comments on your company blog.  This is an area that a lot of blogging companies need and want help with.

But at the end of the day, how does averaging 5 comments per post versus 3 comments per post REALLY help your business?  How does your business benefit from having more comments on your company blog?

This is a VERY important question, and one that your boss WILL want to know the answer to.

So with that in mind, let’s think about some of the ways that your company could benefit from having more comments on its blog:

1 – More comments increases the chance that more people will read the blog

2 – As the blog gets more readers, it will likely get more subscribers

3 – Traffic will increase, and incoming links likely will as well

Now this list is great, but we still need to work these benefits of comments back to your business’ bottom line, or at least get a bit closer.

But before we go any further, let’s back up and address WHY your company is blogging. What is the main goal?

Is the blog being used as a customer service tool? If so, then you want more comments because they gives you a better chance of interacting with customers on the blog, and helping them.

Is the blog being used as a tool to increase or improve your online reputation? If so, more comments can still benefit, as long as those comments are part of a positive interaction for the reader.

Is the blog being used as a tool to increase online awareness? If so, more comments could increase the chance of getting more incoming links, which increases your search rankings, with leads to greater online awareness.

The bottom line is that you can’t just say that ‘our company blog needs more comments’. You have to tie the need for more comments to a LARGER goal for your blog that ultimately satisfies a larger BUSINESS goal.

For example, do you REALLY want more traffic do your blog, or do you want your blog to send more QUALIFIED traffic to your website, IOW customers that are READY to buy from you? If so, you need to pattern the experience on your blog, so that it encourages this type of behavior from your readers.

At the end of the day, is your boss more likely to want to see 5 comments per post, or five SALES per post? If you want your boss to get excited about you getting five comments per post, then you need to be able to show her how getting 5 comments per post is going to directly or indirectly lead to five SALES per post.

The cold, hard business reality is that ‘the conversation’ still has to lead to ‘the sale’, or at create obvious value for your business. The more you can do to tie ‘the conversation’ back to ‘the wallet’, the more your boss will support your social media efforts. And if you need some help getting a solid blogging strategy in place that benefits your business, please email me so we can discuss how I could help your company.

Last week at Social South, Dell’s Lionel Menchaca and I led a Social Media Conversation on Business Blogging. I was hoping that the attendees would want to discuss how they could use a blog as a tool to reach larger business goals. But I was a bit surprised that most attendees wanted to know how to get more comments and interaction on their blog. This does make sense, as bloggers want something they can point to as being a sign of the success of their blog, and comments is a good way to show that customers are interested in the blog.

But I still think you need to link comments back to a larger business goal, so what I wanted to do in today’s post was address ways to increase comments and interaction on your blog. Then on Friday, we’ll talk about ways to link that increased interaction back to larger business goals for the blog (which is what your boss ULTIMATELY cares about more than the comments).

So for today, here’s 10 Steps to Getting More Comments and Interaction on Your Business Blog

1 – Ask. Yes it seems painfully simple, but few bloggers ask their readers to comment. Get in the habit of doing this.

2 – Respond to comments. Another no-brain tip, but it’s one many people overlook. The more you respond to comments, the more you encourage future comments.  Now this doesn’t necessarily mean you need to reply to every single comment, but it does mean you should try to respond to as many as you can.

3 – Refer to commenters by name. This REALLY helps put people at ease about commenting, and encourages interaction. If you want more comments and interaction, try to facilitate a conversation in the comments, and referring to commenters by their first name is a great example of this.  Check out how the HomeGoods bloggers at the Open House blog do this.  And notice how the readers are replying back to Cathy by her first name as well.  The comments section is completely conversational, isn’t it?

4 – Respond to commenters on THEIR blog. If I leave a comment on your blog, the best way to ensure that I continue reading and commenting on your blog, is to come back and comment on MY blog. This is another seemingly no-brain tip, but many people overlook this as well.  And track when people link to your blog in a post, and go leave a comment on that post!  All you are doing is encouraging the type of action that you want your readers to take!

5 – Post regularly. Posting regularly does NOT mean posting 2-3 times a week. That’s ideal, but if you can’t do this, find a posting schedule that works for YOU, and stick with it. If it’s once a week, try to get that once a week post up on the same day every week. If it’s twice a week, then try to publish new posts every Tuesday and Thursday. The point is, post on a regular schedule so your readers know when to expect a new post from you. Yes, some of your readers will subscribe to your feed, but don’t assume this will happen. Train your readers to know when your new content will be published, and that increases the likelihood that they will read your new post, and comment on it.

6 – Moderate and approve comments as quickly as possible. Nothing kills the potential for a conversation to develop in the comments quicker than a 4-hour delay in approving comments. But if new comments are posted quickly, or aren’t moderated at all, then it increases the chance of other people jumping in and adding their 2 cents.

7 – Put the focus on your best commenters. The readers that comment frequently are GOLD, treat them as such. Maybe add a recent comments plugin to your blog, or Comment Luv, which is a WordPress plugin that this blog uses that adds a link to the commenter’s most recent blog post. Just remember that commenters are engaging in activity that you WANT them to take, so do everything you can to encourage this behavior.

8 – Put a ‘window’ on your comments section. Let’s say you write a post, and it gets a couple of comments. Then Jeff comes in and leaves an amazing comment that spurs 5 other people to comment within a few hours. Why not edit your post to add Jeff’s great comment at the end, and when you do, LINK to Jeff’s blog. This does two things; first, it alerts your readers that there’s a great conversation happening in the comments, and second, it rewards Jeff for his great comment. Which also encourages others to comment as well.

9 – Be controversial. This works with a BIG caveat; being controversial works great if you are taking a stance on an issue that you are passionate about, but not so much if you are being controversial just for the sake of getting a traffic spike. And yes, your readers can tell the difference.

For example, my most commented on post ever was this one I wrote a few months ago on The Viral Garden. This post tackles a subject that a lot of bloggers wrestle with; which is more important, good content, or having a community of readers for your blog. My stance is that community is more important, so instead of taking a ‘what do you think?’ stance, I titled the post ‘The idea that ‘content is king’ in blogging is total bullshit’. And I stated my position so strongly because I knew that it would encourage BOTH sides of this issue to comment, and that’s exactly what happened. But again, if this wasn’t an issue that I wasn’t passionate about, it wouldn’t have worked as well. So this is a well that most of us can only dip into so often, in my opinion.

10 – Thank your readers for commenting.  I do this all the time, not because I am trying to ‘encourage’ them to comment more, but because I am honestly appreciative of their comments.  If you are as well, your readers will pick up on that, and they’ll want to comment more.

These are 10 tips for getting more comments on your company’s blog.  On Friday, we’ll look at ways to tie that increased interaction back into reaching your larger business goals.  If all this is still confusing to you, please email me as I’ll be happy to discuss how we could work together to improve your blogging efforts!

It’s finally happened.  After months of prodding, your skeptical boss has agreed to listen to your pleas for how your company should be blogging. She calls you into her office, and when you sit down, she asks pointedly “So, tell me why we should start a blog.”

You smile with pride and explain that “Blogging is a conversation, and right now we aren’t a part of it.  We need to start a blog so we can join the conversation.”

The sudden frown on your boss’ face tells you that you just watched your company’s blogging strategy die a premature death.

Every week I talk to mid-level managers that are trying to sell their boss on using blogging and social media.  Almost all of them talk about the importance of the conversation, of interaction, of being social.  Anyone that’s read this blog knows that I am a champion of the ability of social media as a set of tools to build interaction and community.

But your skeptical boss isn’t.  Your skeptical boss wants to know how blogging and social media is going to help them grow their business.  They don’t care about ‘the conversation’ simply because they don’t understand how ‘the conversation’ is going to lead them to ‘the sale’.

And unfortunately, the office social media evangelist probably doesn’t understand that connection either.  But if you want your boss to commit to using social media and/or launching a blog, you need to show them how their business will benefit from doing so.

Period.

Social media evangelists understand that a well-positioned blogging strategy can create interactions and community and a larger conversation around that company.  But is that the end business goal of your blog?  How does having more comments per post help you sell more stuff?  How does more RTs from Twitter equal more widgets sold?

These are questions your boss will want to know, and IF you want the buy-in from them, you better have compelling answers.  Often, we stop short in crafting our blog’s positioning.  We think that we need more interaction, but once we have that increased interaction, we still need to build a bridge to the larger business goal for our blog.

Think of it this way; You have well-positioned/valuable blog, which leads to more interaction, which leads to X, which leads to more sales.

You need to determine what ‘X’ is.  That is what your boss wants to hear about, not more interaction or more comments.  If you can explain to your boss what ‘X’ is, and how more comments/interaction relates to and influences ‘X’ (which influences sales), then you’ll get your buy-in.

Then your boss will start to care about ‘the conversation’.  But only if they understand how ‘the conversation’ relates to their larger business goals for their blog.  Your boss probably understands ‘X’.  So you need to sell your boss on ‘X’ as much if not moreso than ‘the conversation’.

So what the hell IS ‘X’?  That’s the magic question, and it will be different for every business.  And it will probably have more than one part.  For example, I will soon be publishing an interview I did recently with a major company, and they explained how they evaluate their blogging efforts.  In their case, they DO have their main blogging goal as being increasing interactions on their blog via more comments and more emails.  But they set that as their main goal because they have seen from years of research that when there is more interaction on their blog, and more POSITIVE interactions with their readers, that they are more likely to create POSITIVE content about the brand, and that positive content shows up in Google search results, which makes a POSITIVE impression on customers that do Google searches for the company and its products.

So this company is fine with having more interactions on their blog be their main blogging goal, because they understand how more interactions leads to more sales.  But the key is they set that as their main blogging goal after studying their efforts and how their customers are buying.  Which is why meticulously studying your blogging efforts and tracking stats is a must, but that’s a post for another day.

For your company, your ‘X’ could be more traffic, it could be more links, it could be more traffic from the blog to your website, etc.  But the odds are your boss understands ‘X’ a lot more than they do the importance of ‘the conversation’.  If you want your boss to launch a blog, you need to show her how the blog will help her business.  You need to understand what needs to happen AFTER ‘the conversation’ happens on your blog, and how that ultimately helps your business reach its larger business goals.

PS: If you have questions about selling your boss on social media (or need help in launching a social media strategy) and would rather email me your questions, contact me at mackDOTcollierATgmailDOTcom

Pic via Flickr user pjbeardsley