While replying to Cheryl Sternman Rule’s comment about how to attract good food blog comments, I got an idea:

What if we all chimed in about which post garnered the most responses on our blogs, and why we think it worked?

The first part is easy enough. It’s based on the number of responses. I don’t care how many you got, as this is not a competition. Let’s skip giveaways as a category.

Next tell us why it worked. Was it the photograph? A banana bread recipe (I’ve heard that desserts are no-fail)? A personal crisis? Your baby announcement (seriously, Smitten Kitchen readers went berserk )? 

I’ll go first. My biggest response was for (more…)

I’ve been thinking about how to attract good comments since writing my previous two posts on commenting.

The first was on the value of comments like  “Looks delicious.” It garnered my all-time highest response. I guess that’s not surprising, since that’s the response that often comes to mind when reading food blogs (or it should, if the blogger’s doing it right!). The second was on whether commenting on posts is a worthwhile strategy to build traffic.

I asked a lot of questions in those two posts, because I’m counting on you all to help me figure out the answers. This caused regular commenter Nate to ask me: “How do you structure a post or a question on a food blog post to cultivate signal and reduce noise?” Okay, I’ll give it a shot.

But first, a qualifier. My blog is a place where people discuss topics I’ve brought up, sometimes with each other! Maybe yours is not. (more…)