The Benefits of Blog Participation

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Charlie Munger is one of the lesser known billionaires. He is the right hand man of the second richest person living - Warren Buffet. And he maybe one of the smartest person living. Here is an excerpt from a speech given by Charlie Munger on the topic of “mental models” and “human mis-judgment”:

For instance, a lottery.

• You have a lottery where you get your number by lot, and then somebody draws a number by lot, it gets lousy play.
• You have a lottery where people get to pick their number, you get big play.

Ita_Ts this consistency and commitment thing. People think if they have committed to it, it has to be good. The minute theya_Tve picked it themselves it gets an extra validity. After all, they thought it and they acted oA-n it.

The Power of Participation

The power of participation doesn’t only work for lotteries. It works for blogs too. Involve people with your blog and they will keep coming back again and again to read more.

3 Ways of Involving Readers With Your Blog

1. Comments: Allowing your readers to comment on your blog posts is the easiest way to get them involved with your blog. Some people argue that comments are not worth it because only 1-3% of your readers will ever comment. But don’t ignore reader commenting because those 1-3% readers will be your most loyal readers. Encourage your readers to comment and they will stick with you longer.

So How To Encourage Commenting?

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i. Ask. Simply end your post with a question and ask your readers for their opinion.

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ii. Be outrageous. The more whacky your post will be, the more comments you’ll receive.

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iii. Leave your posts incomplete. Don’t talk about everything under the sun. Leave gap in your posts so that people can comment.

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iv. Give incentives. Give rewards to people to comment. This could simply be listing your top commenters on your blog every month. Or giving them goodies and rewards for making quality comments.

2. Polls: From time to time, create a poll - where you have one question and multiple choices for answers. And then ask your readers to vote for their best choice.

Polls are very powerful tools. Not only from reader participation point of view. But also from PR point of view. After you collect and compile the poll results, simply write a short press release with the poll results and send it to the media. They love quotes and sound bites!

3. Reader Roundtable: Another simply tactic you can use is simply ask an open ended question to your readers. And ask them to email their opinions and answers to you with a link to their website. The idea is to compile a special report or create a special blog post with the best answers you receive.

Can you think of any other idea to increase reader participation with your blogs?

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Posted by Ankesh Kothari under Stratagems on 29 Jun 2007

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