This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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In the early days of blogs, companies and also some people who didn't know any better would refer to hits, like website hits, you know, how many hits does your website get? This goes back quite a while, but you would hear that all the time. Or if a website was kind of promoting itself, or they were talking about some website, it would be like, this website has so many hits, you know, whatever the number is. And eventually people figured out that this was a meaningless metric because it's very imprecise, just saying a hit. If one visitor goes to 10 different pages on your website, is that 10 hits.
Sometimes if you have images or other media, other content on your website, you know, one visitor to that page can register as a dozen hits or more, perhaps. So in other words, very imprecise metric, people eventually stopped using it. Well, I'm starting to think that engagement is the new hit, the new website hit, because everybody wants visitors and listeners, readers, et cetera, who will not only consume content, but also participate. And all of the social media algorithms reward posts that get more comments, which, you know, is probably like a well-meaning idea, but it's also why now you can see all kinds of people trying to gain the system, you know, posting on Instagram and saying, oh, tag a friend, you know, tag a friend if you, you know, whatever, kind of answering a question. Tag a friend if you, you know, believe in puppies or whatever.
So today's listener wants to get more comments, okay? So we're gonna talk about that, how to get more engagement, but perhaps more importantly, as you can kind of probably tell from this introduction, is that the right objective? What might be better instead, and what could be some more helpful context for this whole goal? Because ultimately, what do you wanna do? It's not just about getting more comments on your Instagram.
Ultimately, you want to have some impact in sales and all that kind of stuff. So let's break it down in this episode. How do I get more comments on my blog and my Instagram posts? [Music]
Hey, Chris, this is Ali from Kansas City, and I'm a longtime listener, first time question asker. Thanks to you and the team for all the helpful info.
My side hustle is urban gardening, something a lot of people have been interested in over the past few months. Interestingly, traffic to my blog is much higher now than it was before the pandemic. But even though I'm getting a few thousand visitors a month, very few people engage with my content. I want them to leave comments both on the blog and on my Instagram profile. And it seems that fewer than 2% ever do.
What am I doing wrong? Can't wait to hear from you. [Music]
Ali, what's up? Congratulations on the new blog. Thank you for this great question.
First time question asker, love that phrasing. So I guess first things first, I don't think you're doing anything wrong. I think you're actually doing something right. And you've chosen a topic that has increasing amount of interest and it's something that can fairly easily at least in some fashion connect to a revenue model. There should be something you can develop for sale or if nothing else, you should be able to earn some affiliate commissions through this project.
So I guess the first thing is I wouldn't worry so much about the comment thing because most people will never comment. When you say fewer than 2%, it's usually something like 1%. So if you've actually got higher than that, that's great. A lot of people just remember, a lot of your readers, if they're coming to this blog, especially the repeat visitors, they're happy. They're just enjoying it.
They don't necessarily need to participate in that particular way. And I would encourage you and everybody else to actually be careful about catering to the most frequent commenters because yes, those people are active and loyal, but they're not necessarily your most loyal readers or followers. This is something I kind of used to think about a lot in the early days of my blog. And I eventually took comments off my blog just because that was kind of how things were moving more on the internet to different engagement on social networks, et cetera. But whether it is on Instagram or on your blog or anywhere else, I don't think success is based on comments.
It can be another ridiculous metric like website hits, as I mentioned in the introduction, perhaps not quite as ridiculous as that. But before we wrap up, how can you get more engagement if that is your goal? I think one thing that's really good is to create content that asks questions. Gretchen Rubin, my good friend and the founder of the Onward Project, which is kind of the network or the group of podcasts of which Side Hustle School is a founding member. She is really good at this.
So she's really good at asking lots of questions and kind of, it's not so much about storing up debate as it is introducing conversation. So I think asking questions is good. Giveaways can be really big. If you're giving something away and it's like comment to win, well, that's certainly an incentive to comment. And of course you could try that tag a friend trick that I mentioned in the beginning.
I would just say don't overdo that kind of stuff because the more important thing is people are coming to your blog or to your Instagram or wherever because they are interested in it and because it has value for them. So don't lose the forest for the trees. Ally, you're doing great. Anybody else out there, if you're struggling with comments, but you actually have visitors, then that's great. And if you don't have visitors, let's focus on that more than comments or any other particular metric.
All right, listeners, if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We're gonna continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from other listeners. I'm so thrilled to be able to make this program for you every single day. Thank you so much for listening. My name is Chris Guillebeau.
This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
