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Blog Challenge 25: You Better Ask Somebody!

Posted by in 31DBBB, Blogging


This post is part of my ongoing series based upon the eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. To read all of my other posts on the subject, check out the 31DBBB category. For more on the book itself, visit ProBlogger.

We’re now starting the last week of daily readings on improving your blog and I hope you’ve found my takes on these useful and interesting.

Today’s focuses on the quintessential piece of advice nearly everyone gives a blogger: ask a question.

Blogging experts hand this advice out so often that one might think that all you have to do is ask a question at the end of a post and you’ll be guaranteed comments. Would that it worked so easily.

That’s not to say that asking a question is a turn-off; but if you’re writing on a subject that either doesn’t resonate so well, or if someone doesn’t get through your post to where the question actually is, they’re naturally not going to answer it.

I think that’s why a lot of bloggers give up so easily: they don’t get the interaction they’re expecting right from the start.

So can asking a question help?

Certainly.

It can spark discussion. It can create a lively debate. It can enlighten your readers (and you) to alternate points of view.

But when I’m in an “Andy Rooney” mood as I’m writing a post, I already know what my last line is going to be. I don’t want to muck it up with a question that feels formulaic and forced just to get a question in.

Sure, I could ask the question earlier in the piece, provided that I can do it in a way that doesn’t kill the flow of what I’m writing. But asking something at the end of a post, after expressed your views on a topic, just feels like the right place to ask that question.

If you choose to ask one at all.

It’s also, by coincident, the point of your post that just happens to be closest to your comment form, so it’s a lot more convenience to ask for a comment next to the comment form rather than expecting everyone to stop reading, scroll down, then go back and pick up where they left off. (Or, to remember that you asked a question paragraphs earlier by the time they get to the last line you’re so proud of.)

In this case, a question seems appropriate, so I’ll indulge the text.

Your Turn:
How often do you ask a question in your posts, and what percentage of the time would you guess that you get a reply?