Reward both top and other commentors

Many bloggers love readers who leave a lot of comments. If a person leaves a lot of comments, that probably means that the person is adding more value to your site compared to people who leave fewer comments. While it is nice to appreciate the people who leave a lot of comments, it is also nice to appreciate people who leave only a few comments because they also take the time to read what you write.

Loving top commentors is like loving people who do the most things for you. The more things people do for you, the more you appreciate those people. People leave a lot of comments for you, and you love those people in return. Compared to top commentors, commentors who post less frequently get overlooked by many bloggers for a very simply reason: supposedly people who do not comment much on a site do not add as much value to the site as the top commentors do. Top commentors supposedly add the most value to your posts, so why should anyone pay much attention to people who only comment occassionally, right?

Be considerate to non-top commentors’ reasons for not commenting too much

Well, the reason you should pay attention to every commentor is because not all commentors have the same lifestyle. Some commentors can access a website any time of the day, while other commentors get only a few minutes a day to go online because of having other responsibilities in their offline lives. Some commentors leave comments with even the simplest of thoughts, while other commentors prefer leaving comments only when they can write long comments with useful information.

Many bloggers run contests where they give prizes only to top commentors. Because of this, people are usually tempted to comment more simply to earn prizes. In contrast, people who comment less, simply because they want to comment when they can contribute nicely to a conversation, get left behind. Bloggers should realize that sometimes, the quality of comments counts more than the number of comments. That is why many times people who do not comment much tend to leave detailed and more thorough comments compared to people who leave comments every minute.

Reward top commentors while rewarding other commentors too

If you must reward people who comment a lot, I would suggest the route that Ronald took on his site Ronalfy; he gave a ticket-type entry to every comment, with the number of people leaving more comments getting more chances at winning a prize. That way, even if the scales were not even, a person who left a single comment could also win a prize.

The next time you want to reward only the people who comment on your site a lot, think of the reasons some people do not comment on your site that much. If you like to give more gifts to friends who talk to you a lot compared to friends who love hanging around you but are too shy to talk too much, go ahead and reward your top commentors way more than other commentors. Otherwise, try to see if you can appreciate people who are not top commentors a bit more than usual also. You should appreciate all commentors because all of them read and commented on your site, regardless of the number of comments they actually posted.

Other RA Project Articles

• The Reader Appreciation Project on Facebook (0)
• Readers Behaving Badly – Introduction (3)
• Interview: Doug Parent, the “Adult MySpace” owner (7)
• Are readers obligated to appreciate bloggers? (6)
• The “I want to speak to your manager!” Phenomenon (2)

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