Over the last week, three people have called the IttyBiz helpline — well, they emailed, but that doesn’t sound nearly as cool — asking how to increase the comments on their blogs. Since I have been blessed with the loudest and most prolific readers on the internet, I thought I’d take a stab at it.

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Before you can get more commentors, you need to understand why people comment. Commentors can be split into three groups. Each of these groups has two subsets. Hence the title. Get it?

The Emoter:

The Emoter comments because you provoked an emotional reaction in him, and he wants to share it. You made him spit his gin out laughing or you made his eyes get misty. You shocked him. You scared him. You surprised him. Maybe he thought, “Holy shit, that’s GENIUS!” Basically you got him out of his drone-like existence for long enough to feel genuine human emotion and he feels the need to say something about it. Read More

Kate, who I adore for reasons that extend beyond her enthusiasm that borders on the offensive, has a question.

“I currently work in IT Project Management (oh, the excitement! Ahem…) and I may soon have an opportunity to move into corporate communications. WOOHOO! This gets a WOOHOO because I really wanted to go into marketing but thought I wasn’t cool enough to major in it. (I know, I roll my eyes at me, too.)

Since I saw you used to work in Mega Company corporate communications, I thought maybe you could give me some inside scoop on what the job really is. This would be the communications department for the IT department that reports to the corporate communications folks. Read More