What’s a Blog without Comments?
When it comes to internal company blogs, in my experience, the communications department is usually onboard and the executives come to realize that they have to take the time to blog and write out their thoughts. They know it’s important to communicate information in their own voice about company initiatives in order to keep everyone informed and sharing useful information. Blogs are a great way to communicate directly with employees, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that employees will embrace the blog from the start and engage with executives. What’s a company to do?
When I met with my client last week in NYC, I was so pleased to hear that the President of the company was blogging. This was their first foray into blogging and, unfortunately, their efforts were met with disappointment. The VP of Marketing said to me, “We set up the blog, he’s been blogging for well over two weeks and no one is commenting. There is not one comment since he started.” I wasn’t surprised by the results of the initial effort because from past experience this has been the case for many of my clients who start an internal blogging program. Sometimes culture plays a part in the lack of employee comments or employees are simply not used to collaborating through social media.
When I spoke with the President about the situation he said, “I know that people read the blog. They make a point of saying to me, “Hey I read your blog post…” It was clear that employees were reviewing the posts, but no one wanted to be the first one to have a conversation.
My immediate suggestions were to:
- Double check the nature of the blog content. The President of the company may be discussing topics such as earnings calls and company policy, which don’t necessarily warrant employee comments.
- Ask questions and seek answers from members of the company. Blogging is about two way conversation. If you select topics of interest and ask for opinions or for people to share information, employees are more apt to participate.
- If you think employees feel uncomfortable commenting on an executive blog, seed the blog with guest blog posts from different members of the company. Perhaps employees don’t want to engage first with the President’s blog, but would feel differently about commenting on a directors or a senior manager’s blog.
- Keep blogging and don’t get discouraged. If you keep up with the pace and continue to offer interesting information and invite comments, then eventually the culture will shift.
- Ask a few people to join the conversation in a non-threatening way. Let them know that their contribution will help the company to maintain constant communication with employees and upper management.
- Send reminders to employees to let them know that the blog is active and that they are invited to join in the conversation.
- Add in photos, video, podcasts and other interesting materials. Let’s face it, employees are busy all day and may not have the time to review and comment on the blog during the workday. If they’re reading the blog at home (early morning or at night), then make it a little fun or humorous, so that they enjoy what they’re reading and want to join in on the conversation.
These are just a few helpful suggestions, especially if you are experiencing a similar situation. I know there must be many other helpful tips, so if you have any, please feel free to share and discuss them. We can all learn together.
November 25, 2008 @ 6:00 pm
Lunch-time twitter reading, I came across an article titled “10 Techniques to Get More Comments on Your Blog.” It comes from problogger…and is worth a read.
November 26, 2008 @ 1:28 am
Hey Greg, Thank you for making my blog a part of your lunch-time reading and for providing the article on how to get more comments on your blog. I will definitely share this with my client!
December 31, 2008 @ 12:45 am
Two other methods that can help to encourage comments are allowing DoFollow links (removing default nofollow attributes so that “link juice” is passed to the sites) and installing the KeywordLuv plugin, which significantly helps commenters with SEO because it allows them to choose the anchor text for links.
Overall, it is a good thing to encourage comments because the extra content provided by other people adds more keywords to your posts, which in turn brings in more traffic from the search engines without costing you any more time than it takes to write the original post.
December 31, 2008 @ 12:57 am
Great point about comments adding key words to help with search engine optimization. I don’t think that a lot of companies realize the value of the comments and how this can help bring traffic to your site.
January 9, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
Nice post. Just discovered this blog – new to me in 2009 – so I’ll be coming back for more useful comment. Happy new year to all
January 9, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
Happy New Year and I’m glad you found my blog 🙂
March 12, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
Great article. Nice blog. Keep it coming. Mike
March 12, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
Thanks for the feedback on my blog 🙂
March 13, 2009 @ 9:28 am
Very nice information. Thanks for this.
March 15, 2009 @ 10:29 am
Finally something new for me to learn and bookmark. Hey thanks again, I am already subscribed. You can contact me if you need to. 😀
March 24, 2009 @ 8:02 am
This post is really a must bookmarked for me! Thank you so much. 😀
Just asking, do you use Aweber? If so, can you provide more information on this? I am subscribed to your rss to check if you are going to post something on Aweber. 🙂
April 7, 2009 @ 4:58 am
Hey thanks. I just want to ask you, how do I increase RSS readers?
April 8, 2009 @ 12:08 am
Hi, no I’m not using Awebar, but now I will check it out. Thanks!
April 8, 2009 @ 12:12 am
Hi, your question about RSS readers, do you mean how do you increase the number of people who subscribe to your feed? If so, I tend to use RSS for my blog (that’s an obvious one) but I also recommend to my clients to make an RSS feed available in any area of their website that is frequently updated. This way, customers, media, bloggers, etc. can get news and information on their company quickly and from different sources within the company. Hope this helps.
April 10, 2009 @ 7:14 am
Awesome post! Keep up the great writing.
April 10, 2009 @ 1:13 pm
Thanks, Jean!