8 Ways to Have Better Blog Conversations

Raise your hand if you sometimes wake up excited to begin your blogging day but then find yourself staring at a blank screen with nothing interesting to say? (The majority of hands should be in the air.)

It’s okay. It happens to everyone. It certainly happens to me; in fact, it happened this morning.

The question is what do you write about when you don’t know what to write about?

Thanks to some of the best bloggers out there, I’ve come up with a “system” that helps me stay productive and find blogging inspiration even on those mornings when my blogging brain feels like scrambled eggs.

Here is the very complicated system: I take the non-blogging thoughts of someone I respect and reposition them as lessons for bloggers, which I did recently after hearing Chris Brogan speak for the first time.

This morning, I’m going to take a blog post that I read at Michael Hyatt’s blog about how to have better dinner conversations and reposition it for our purposes here to provide some useful tips on how to have better blog conversations.

Blog Conversation Defined

First, allow me provide my definition for a “blog conversation”.

Clearly a blog conversation can be viewed as the give and take that often occurs in the comment section of a post. This is the most obvious and public forum where a conversation will take place regarding a blog post.

However, there are other potential “conversations” that you do not want to overlook.

A reader may not feel comfortable posting a public comment, but may want to ask for more information, provide their opinion, or disagree with you about something. I have often been emailed by readers for these reasons. This is a form of blog conversations.

Additionally, another blogger may be reading your post and it could inspire them to post about it on their own blog. This is similar to a comment on your post, but will probably be longer and will draw their audience into the conversation about your blog post.

Finally, there is the private conversation that occurs between you, your words, and the reader. You can influence someone, entertain them, anger them, produce a wide range of emotions and reactions, and never know because they do not comment, email, or post about what they have read.

Realize that each of these conversations is important in its own right, and the best blog posts simultaneously galvanize them all.

What Good Dinner Conversations Can Teach Us About Good Blog Conversations

So what can a blog post about having better dinner conversations teach us about having better blog conversations? Plenty.

Before you read the rest of this post, I encourage you to take a quick cyber jaunt over to Michael Hyatt’s blog and read his post How to Have Better Dinner Conversations. What follows here will make more sense when you have the foundation for what inspired me to write this post.

I have taken Hyatt’s eight strategies for better dinner conversation and repurposed them for the blogger who is looking to enhance the conversation that occurs during and after their posts.

1. Consciously construct a conducive environment

The design of your blog can have a great impact on a reader’s willingness to follow along with you on the journey of a post or series of posts.

One of our goals with the design of this website was to be as minimalist as possible, maintain plenty of white space, and strategically use pictures and video to create an inviting, uncluttered, illustrative atmosphere for learning about and discussing blogging.

Contrast the look and feel of this website with one of my other blogs, Midwest Sports Fans. While the design has served its purpose well, it has dawned on me recently that MSF’s design has gotten a little cluttered and that the conversation could be improved with a more serene environment for the reader.

2. Have only one conversation at a time

From a reader standpoint and from an SEO standpoint, it is important not to try to do too much in a single post.

Allow your reader to focus on one main idea at a time, which will help them to formulate a response. When you are all over the place with a post, you run the risk of having a distracted or lost reader. If a reader is focusing his or her energy on making sense of your post, they aren’t focusing on their own response to it and probably will not have anything to say afterwards.

Similarly, search engines like to know what your post is about (hence the importance of the title) and then see that the actual content matches up. If you cannot come up with a simple title because your post is tackling so many disparate subjects, there is a good chance that a search engine will have trouble categorizing and ranking your post. Why cannibalize your ideas?

3. Write about open-ended, interesting topics

Hyatt talks about the importance of asking interesting questions in his post about dinner conversations. When it comes to blogging, I would reposition this idea to be writing about open-ended and interesting topics that will engage a reader.

If you do nothing more than regurgitate a set of facts, your post can be valuable for readers but you may not inspire much conversation. If you provide a unique, informed perspective on an interesting topic, however, you are far more likely to inspire thought, reflection, and hopefully a response.

4. Ask a second question

As Hyatt says, “the most interesting conversations come after the initial answer.” This is true for dinner conversations and it can also be true for blog conversations.

While your reader is engaged with your post, a private conversation is occurring between the two of you. Knowledge is being attained, opinions are being formulated, emotional reactions are being had. Many times though, the conversation ends there and a reader leaves your post without having any kind of external response.

What should you do? Ask them for one.

Michael Hyatt and many other great bloggers end their posts with specific questions, and then you see a seemingly endless wall of comments underneath. That question is the “second question” in this case. Ask/challenge your readers to crystallize their response into words, thus furthering the conversation for everyone.

To briefly summarize:

• The topic of your post is the “open-ended question” that should inspire a response.
• Follow it up with a second question to draw that response out of the reader.

5. Draw out those who are reticent to speak

Part of achieving #5 is making sure you heed the advice in #4 and directly ask people for their response. You want to also be strategic with your question to draw out the most compelling responses possible, which often come from those who may initially be shy or reluctant to join the conversation.

Unfortunately, the people who are often reticent to respond are those who have an opinion that may be in the minority. They may fear being flamed or having their opinion ridiculed. But how interesting is the conversation if everyone is just agreeing with each other?

Obviously you cannot ask individual questions to individual readers in your blog post. However, you can go out of your way to draw out responses that might oppose or challenge the main idea of your post.

• What parts of my argument do you disagree with?
• For those of you who disagree, what facts or ideas am I missing or forgetting?

These are a couple of general questions you could include at the end of a post that show you are willing to listen to opposing views and that such views are welcomed, not discouraged. We’ll be coming back to this point when we get to #8 below.

6. Pay attention to people’s informational needs

In his post, Hyatt discusses the importance of making sure people are comfortable during dinner so that their focus is on the conversation. In a blogging sense, I look at this as making sure that people have the information and resources they need, in the form of links and excerpts, to fully understand your point.

Think about how inconvenient it would be if I kept mentioning Michael Hyatt’s blog post, but didn’t provide you with a link to it. You’d be forced to find it on your own for reference, which would be an unnecessary pain in the neck and a distraction.

It would also be distracting and cumbersome if I forced you to click over to his post every time I wanted to reference something. That is why I have strategically quoted his post when I have wanted to highlight a specific point I am making as juxtaposed with the related point he made in his post.

Pay attention to this. Give your readers everything they need to fully consume your post. Otherwise there is a good chance you will lose them or only make a portion of the impact you could have made.

7. Do more listening than talking

I know what you’re thinking. I’m writing the post! How can I do more listening than talking?

Easy.

You can listen to your readers’ past reactions to posts to help guide your future topic choice. What do they find interesting? What do they respond to? What do they critique about your writing that you can improve on the next time?

Listen also to your sources. Your readers have given you the gift of your attention because they they appreciate your opinion about a topic. Accept the responsibility of making your opinion as informed and valuable as possible, and then take the time to introduce your readers to the sources that inform you.

Finally, if you want your readers to really read and digest your post before commenting, make sure you do the same before responding to their comment. And do respond to their comment! Show people that you appreciate their contribution and they are more likely to contribute next time.

8. Affirm people, even if you disagree with them

Earlier, I addressed the importance of using a post-ending question to draw out reticent or opposing views. Once you received these views in the form of comments, you obviously want to listen to and consider what is being said. Then, before you respond, make sure that you let people know that you appreciate their opinion and their willingness to share it.

Just because you disagree on one point with someone does not mean that you cannot engage in a respectful and enlightening conversation on the subject. Quite the contrary, by affirming and interacting with even the people you disagree with, the conversation on your blog will be that much more diverse and interesting for everyone.

Plus, I bet you that reader will come back and be more inclined to interact next time.

Galvanize the Conversation

Blogging is a wonderful experience in so many ways. From a pure writing standpoint, I cannot really think of another profession or hobby that is more immediately gratifying for someone who loves to write.

But if you want your blog to be about more than your own thoughts, if you want to develop an active and lively community of conversation, you need to make it a point to go out of your way to do so. Remember that attention spans are short on the Internet.

For me, thinking about a blog conversation as a dinner conversation is a great way to focus on the many subtle elements that create the kind of robust conversations you see on nearly every post at blogs like Michael Hyatt’s and Chris Brogan’s. Who among us wouldn’t want to have that level of interaction on a daily basis?

Hopefully you have been able to pick up a few tips here that will put you on that track. Oh, and you’re invited to the dinner party being hosted now in the comment section. Please feel free and encouraged to answer the question below or provide your reaction to the eight principles discussed above.

What are your ideas for implementing the 8 strategies above to encourage better blog conversation?

Tagged as: blog conversation, commenting, michael hyatt