Respond to Comments on Steem to Convert Readers to Followers! #3
Would you read through this post today on Steem if you are new because we will see that the critical thing to do is to respond to comments on Steem starting with those on our first post?
Respond to Comments on Steem to Convert Readers to Followers! #3
Responding to comments on Steem means that when anyone makes a reply on our posts, we then respond with our own comment.
Here's my profile on Steemit.
I have responded to over 3,000 comments on Steem, which is why it shows that I have 3,312 posts today.
Even though I've actually made about three hundred posts on my blog, it counts comments and posts together, which is why I have over 3,000 comment replies plus 300 posts today.
Now, personally, I started out responding to as many comments as I could on Steem. I tried to respond to every single comment if possible. Sometimes I got behind and missed a lot. Other times I'd go through and respond to as many as I could.
Now, if you think bigger is always better here's an example, it's not. It is ideal to respond to every single comment. As we are building followers, it's critical to build a relationship with every single comment we get, because each comment we get on our posts that are not from some bot or spam, that's a chance we make of building a deeper relationship with a reader who will stick with us potentially for years.
I know as a reader, I love it when authors respond to my comments. Now, there is a big problem though. The more followers we get as an author, the harder it is to respond to individual comments.
I will go through and show you some of my posts down here now. You will see that my posts on average have 50 to 100 comments on every single post.
If you scroll down my profile at https://steemit.com/@jerrybanfield, you will see that I have posts with 50, 90 or even more than 100 comments. I personally don't practice this anymore because there are too many comments for me to respond to.
As you can see, my wife did a great job with this on her first post that got 254 comments. Now, close to half of those comments are from her, and especially building an introduction post, you are likely to get lots of comments on that.
What happens in the bottom of the post, you have a chance to click "Reply" and as soon as we click "Reply" on a post, this is how we respond to a post. You can type comments in here, "Comment here," and then you click "Post" to make the post show up as a comment.
Comments are replies after you click the "Reply" button on a post on Steem and you can also reply to individual comments.
You can see @laurabanfield consistently responding to the comments on this post, not every single comment, but she put about 50 or so replies to the comments.
If you look at her profile, you can see how many comments she did in total. She has 90 posts, therefore, she made one post on her blog, and then responded to 89 comments on her first post.
That is the ideal recipe because this intro post is often a limited opportunity. Once you've done the intro post, this is often one of the easiest posts to get recognized on and to actually get people to respond to and make comments.
It's amazing the opportunity to make an intro post and to make posts on an ongoing basis that is missed when we fail to respond to comments.
Now, unfortunately, if you get about 50 comments on a post that, in terms of time, is about an hour to read through all the comments and make thoughtful responses. The problem with that is an hour of responding to comments often fuels up all these other ego-driven interests and can make things more interesting.
It's good that comments make things more interesting and interactive. Over time some of the negative looking comments will be some of the most helpful, and some of the comments that consistently come will be some of the most active readers.
Not just for people who are commenting, but most people, if you see on this post my wife did, 2,000 views and 200 comments, the ratio of comments to views is actually very small, but the number of people who are then reading through the comments is also significantly higher than the total number of people commenting.
I often look through comments on posts where I don't even actually interact or make a comment on the post. Lots of times you can have amazing things happen just by putting a comment reply up.
Now, to start, it just makes sense to comment on our own posts to begin and to just use that introductory posts to start. We make our intro post and reply. I suggest replying to every single comment on the "introduceyourself" post, even if it's a reply to a reply.
Make that deep relationship beginning through comments. Then, going forward, if you get too many followers and you can't respond to all the comments, which may require a change, but initially and for 99% of authors, I would say it's critical to respond to the comments.
Thank you very much for reading this post, which has been interesting for me to write given I'm sharing advice that goes different from what I'm actually doing today, which I hope is useful for you to see.
If you wonder how I got to having so many followers replying to comments, thousands of comment replies has helped a lot with building followers, helped so much that now there are too many comments.
Thank you very much.
For further reading, here is an awesome post by @ilyastarar sharing a lot more about the value of commenting and how to do a great job with it at https://steemit.com/steemit/@ilyastarar/steemit-earning-guide-series-for-frustrated-minnows-and-newbies-part-1-comment-comment-comment-e3f37f4222e2e
I love you! You're awesome.
I hope day three of Steem basic training was useful for you today.
Final words
Thank you for reading this blog post, which was originally filmed as the video below.
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
Shared on:
- Facebook page with 2,232,245 likes.
- YouTube channel with 215,427 subscribers.
- Twitter to 104,008 followers.
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Hi @jerrybanfield! Thanks for the basic training. I think one of the biggest challenges for minnows isn't necessarily the willingness to engage with readers, but actually having your post get exposure, so people can see it and comment. I'd gladly take the time to reply back on 50 comments. It seems that there is just so much material out there now, competing for exposure, compared to even a few months back. I read other folks' posts and comment and have built some great friendships. But again, the wide exposure seems to be hard to achieve.
Yes i feel like it is a competition to get exposure sometimes but i think if you follow sincerely what you love and bring valuable information or content, it will get the exposure needed somehow. Got to keep it up and going! Other than that, i think it is pretty hard to get fast exposure but sometimes it works, sometimes it does not! What do you think? I am interested to hear what you think about it?
Hi @your.system! Yes, I agree with you that we should keep it up & keep going. It just seems like there is a lot to learn with Steemit. Between paying for upvotes, bots, alliances, who's on discord, etc, I still have a hard time understanding if there is any kind of recipe for success. In the meantime, I write what I enjoy writing, comment and upvote good content and just try to enjoy the Steemit experience without wracking my brain about it too much :)
Denise thank you for reading so many blog posts with me and continuing to comment! All of my posts go out automatically on Facebook and Twitter which helps a lot with additional views. I will have a day devoted to this in the basic training. Wide exposure also brings a wide variety of problems too from downvotes to more comments than responses to a feeling of pressure to produce every day.
If the goal is to help another person the most consistently in post after post, we each will get the exposure we need. The first several years I worked online it was a struggle to get anyone to read anything. Even starting something new like making music with millions of followers it is common to have just 5 or so people watching. More has benefits just like less does and more has downsides just like less does also!
Advertising even $5 or $10 a day is also very effective. Spending $5 or $10 to promote posts in Google ads is what I started with to get more exposure which helps a lot.
Thanks so much for the thoughtful personal reply @jerrybanfield! I know you are busy and I appreciate the tips and encouragement :) Just this week I started using discord to chat with some people, and I'm finding that to be a nice way to make more fulfilling true connections with people. I've also heard there is Steemit chat, which I have not used as yet. Steemit is a great community. I've never been a facebook or twitter superstar, so that is a good point I will keep in mind. I've "converted" a few friends to Steemit, but it's not like I had a ready-made following to bring over. Thanks again for the perspective and all you do to keep us all Steeming onward & upward! :) All the best!
I just wanted to thank you for this training article. I am a complete newbie to this, and I am sure that it all makes perfect sense as to how it all works once you get the hang of it.
I would like to thank you for pointing out the comment section and encouraging readers and Authors a like to make and respond with them. A bigger thank you, for you I think are one of the first other than myself I have seen, that mentioned the views verse the comments and the votes. It is nice to see someone taking an actual interest in the amount of views over the amount of votes one gets. Thank you, may more and more become interested in the view count and not just the vote count.
@bashadow thank you for mentioning the views because this is what I do focus on is getting the most post views with most not even coming from Steem!
People think that votes are what matter,that if they have a lot of votes that means they have great content, yet when votes outweigh views 400 to 1 is that really good content? (that 400-1 is extreme but used for emphasis)
Hey @jerrybanfield !!! You are the whole reason I joined Steemit!! I came across your youtube channel one day and all I heard was you yelling that I need to join steemit and follow you, haha! So here I am and I am following you. All kidding aside, I love your videos and how well you interact with your audience. You are awesome!!
Charlie thank you very much for joining from YouTube and continuing to read and follow here!
I joined because of Jerry too, except for some reason I cannot get my picture to load on here. I find this site harder to use than my Facebook, :-(
Thanks for the informative post. You are adding a lot of value to the steemit community. This is a much better platform than reddit.
Good one
Agreed @frostwind thank you for adding value to Steem with your comment!
Jerry, just wanted to tell you that you made a genius investment in steem. well done
Thank you @marc99! It looks like you did too!
This is a wonderful idea and a post that every newer person needs to look at. I wish it was here when I first started.
Steemit is a community, social media...meaning interaction. Somewhere along the way, too many missed that aspect. I guess the money is what takes people's attention.
Nevertheless, post, comment, upvote...it is the key to steemit success. If all 450K accounts were doing just this, this place would be so big we would be at 2M or 3M people.....the attention would be too great.
Thank you again for all you do on here.
Exactly @taskmaster4450 thank you for tagging me in your posts and adding so much value to our community with your posts and comments!
Always upvote your own comments guys!
Good advice @jerrybanfield Thank You @!
You're welcome @valikos
Some people comment unnecessary or non related topic..But I reply these comments who comment about related topics
Hi Jerry,
I'm sorry for not being able to read this one earlier due to my commitments at home (mainly my sick grandma).
I am incredibly thankful to you for mentioning my post as a reference in this wonderful analysis on why commenting and replying is key to gain loyal readers and followers.
I too try to reply to each comment on my posts. In the beginning, I used to receive hundreds of comments too and it took hours to reply to each one of them. But I went through the exercise despite it becoming hectic at times. I think that's the reason I have a healthy following now and it keeps increasing.
To encourage more comnents from Steemians, I have a habit of upvoting comments as per the value they add to the discussion. It incentivizes commenting and encourages healthy engagement.
You must have gone through a lot of effort in order to reply to comments. But I am glad that you still take that road and care enough to communicate. I personally love commenting on authors who are more likely to reply.
Thank you for sharing insights with us. This post will definitely spread positive interaction trend on Steemit and that's why I feel it is necessary to resteem it.
And I forgot to ask something. I went to Laura's blog and saw that her reputation was down to 4 and she never posted again. While I left a comment there, what went wrong? I see a stupid troll account which flagged everything and made sure the reputation went below 25.
What a brainless thing to do. I wonder if that's the reason Laura isn't authoring anything on that blog anymore.
Looks like you figured it out lol you can see by the upvotes!
You're welcome @ilyastarar I appreciate you helping me to have a great further reading article to show much more depth about doing a great job commenting!