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Why don't my readers participate on my blog?

I don't get it. From my statistics, it appears that I have a pretty good readership for my weblog, about 200-300 people per day, but no-one ever comments on what I'm writing. I just don't get it, what's wrong? is there some design error on my site, or ... ?

Dave's Answer:

Actually, that's a very common experience and I see a similar situation on my own blogs too. It turns out that usability guru Jakob Nielsen's actually analyzed this and come up with what he calls his 90-9-1 rule. He explains it here: Participation Inequality: Encouraging more users to contribute.

Nielsen basically posits that 90% of the people who visit a social or community forum are lurkers, people who read what you've written, but never quite get sufficiently motivated to contribute a note, comment or email message. The remaining 10% are the contributors to your blog or discussion forum, and that further breaks down into 9% who are occasional contributors and 1% who are frequently contributors and typically account for the vast majority of your comments.

Specific to blogs, he suggests that the rule is better described as 95-5-0.1.

As usual with Nielsen's work, however, there's more to it than what he writes, because there are so many ways you can influence or encourage people to contribute, and there are many topics that are more likely to engage readers than others. (An interesting book on this subject is Robert Cialdini's splendid Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion).

For example, this blog attracts a lot of comments, but relative to the traffic level we see, it's far less than 5% of the visitors who are contributing something, by an order of magnitude or more. On the other hand, a more typically political blog might well see that 5% (or even 10%) figure, or higher, if its content is sufficiently controversial.

Note also that there are important things you can do to adversely impact your feedback level too in the world of blogging, including any friction you add to the comment transaction itself. For example, I'm a big fan of Typepad, but if you foolishly configure it to require people to have a "typepad key" to be able to comment, I can guarantee you'll see far, far less than 10% or even 1% comment on your articles. You might seen 0%, actually, because there's just too much of a hassle factor.

Neilsen recognizes this too, by offering his number one recommendation make it easier to contribute. His most interesting observation, however:

"Reward -- but don't over-reward -- participants: Rewarding people for contributing will help motivate users who have lives outside the Internet, and thus will broaden your participant base. Although money is always good, you can also give contributors preferential treatment (such as discounts or advance notice of new stuff), or even just put gold stars on their profiles. But don't give too much to the most active participants, or you'll simply encourage them to dominate the system even more."

Anyway, I hope this gives you some food for thought and helps you think creatively about how you can better engage your audience and gain more discussion on your blog!

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Categorized: Blogs and RSS Feeds (Article 6919)
Tagged: blogging, jakob nielsen, usability
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Comments

Don't forget about content. While this blog is great, I don't normally read something that causes me to react: "That's so wrong/right! I have to let him/her know."

If you're blog is about you and your life, there's not much for people to comment about (unless your mom thinks you need a haircut).

Posted by: Dempsey at October 10, 2006 3:26 AM

Hi Dave,
I'm one of your German readers. I think there is nothing wrong with it. I get your news via a RSS-Feeder. I subscribed about 20 blogs. So it's hard to give feed-back in a short time. But don't worry about don't getting feedback. Post's on your blog are not very controversy, so there is not so many stuff to diskuss about. But for my opinion it's not so important for a blog to get many comments - it's more important to get many readers. And it that point you are very successful.
Ok, here my reasons don't doin' comments:
a) your blog is mostly a adviser tool for a broad range of things (Googe, Myspace...). No fokused target-group
b) Many Blog-Readers like me have a lot's of rss-feeds subscribed, they are just scanning and reeding in the rss-tool (I used Sage but skipped to the Opera Browser these days - now using the implemented Opera-RSS-Tool. Lack of time
c) I found your blog a little bit overloaded. I had some problems first time i read it because the advertising was confusing me. Usability
d) Good blog, some things very useful for me. but not all of them (see point a).
Keep on doin' your good work (and excuse my bad English).
Greez from Germany, Ulrich

Posted by: Ulrich at October 10, 2006 4:29 AM

Hi, Dave

In my experience, I hear complaints about a lack of comments to blogs from bloggers who rarely or never read -- let alone comment on -- other blogs.

In conversational media, you tend to get what you give. If you want comments, it helps to read other blogs and engage them in conversation. That attracts the attention of not just other bloggers, but their audiences, too.

I wrote more about this here:

http://www.rightconversation.com/2006/04/strategic_comme.html

Thanks!

- Amy Gahran

Posted by: Amy Gahran at October 10, 2006 7:24 AM

I couldn't agree more. I have set up a forum on my website (technically not blogging I suppose, but still an opportunity for reader contribution). There has been very little action and yet I would have though the health and wellness theme would have been close to many people's hearts.

At first I thought it was a visibility isue. However, the site has now earned a PR of 3 and has to deal with 8 - 10 applications for membership per day. Sadly, about one third are porn or pharmaceutical sites doing their self promotion. (I don't mind the pharmaceutical sites so much, as there is some relevance).

I'd love to have a magic wand to get input from "real" people!

Posted by: Alikat at May 1, 2007 1:51 AM

Hi,

Thanks for sharing your ideas. A customer loyalty program is often started when a business is established and has a group of customers who make purchases often,like in super markets for instance where you get discounts when you purchase often.

Thanks
Sofia.

Posted by: Sofia Josephson at January 28, 2009 11:51 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!