Musicians Play for Tips- The Importance of Comments
This is not a plea for comments for THIS blog. This is a post thinking about how comments matter to bloggers in general. I use my blog only as a reference point. Instead, this is a reminder that commenting is good, and that if you can’t comment, you can still help out bloggers that you like.
At the time of this blog posting, over 5,300 people receive this blog in their RSS reader (or via email). Another 2,000 - 4,000 come to the site directly, depending on the day and the post. Add those up, and let’s say that around 7,500 people come here daily to read my stuff.
If 1% of you commented, that’d be 75. (I’m bad at math. Did I do that right?) The average post on here gets a respectable 20 or so comments, but that’s about 1/4 of 1% then, of the folks who get a copy of each post. This got me thinking about other great blogs that I love.
I read several hundred blog posts a day. I comment on maybe five or six. So I’m in there with you. I’m not commenting much, either. And yet, if I’m able to leave a decent and thoughtful comment, I know that the other person will appreciate it. Sometimes, it’s a matter of time. If it’s that, here’s some other ways to help:
If You Don’t Have Time to Comment
- Bookmark the post in a social bookmarking site (so others might find it).
- Share it in Google Reader.
- “Like” it in FriendFeed.
- Stumble it in StumbleUpon.
- If it’s *really* good, Digg it.
- Note it on Facebook.
You get the picture. If you enjoy something, but don’t have the chance to comment due to time, another great way to be helpful is to move it along to others in your network. That’s why there are social software tools to begin with: to facilitate that very experience.
I could probably list 100 blogs that deserve more comments without breaking a sweat. You probably could, too. One might even be yours. If you want to talk about your blog in the comments section here, what it’s about, and why someone might want to come by and comment, that might be fun. Want to?
And now that I think about this, because he has comments turned off (for his own reasons), how does Seth Godin know when he’s hit one out of the park? Del.icio.us? Links? Hmm. I love my comments. It’s often better than the post, and it usually tells me when I’ve hit a mark.
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The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Photo credit, kingnixon
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What Were Your First Steps
Let’s do a post inside the comments post today. I’ll ask some questions, and then let’s talk about it in the comments. Fair?
What were your first steps into social media?
Who were your early people you admired and followed?
How did you get started?
If you were going to give advice to someone starting out, what would you tell them?
What will you do in the next few months with social media?
(Let’s see where this goes).
Comments and Why RSS Is Not Enough
Hopefully, someone amazing like Dave Winer will come along and explain to me(us) where this is going.
I dipped into a TechCrunch post to see what people had to say about a recent post, and realized that the comments there are just as important as the posts most time. Sounds like how I feel about here, right?
My thought is that RSS as a communications medium, while being wholly responsible for all the good and wonderful and magical things that have come to the web over the last 5 or 6 years, might need an upgrade. Why? Because I want the comment flow. I want to be part of the back and forth of the conversation under the hood.
Yes, I understand that some blogging platforms have a separate RSS feed for comments, but is that the right solution to the problem? I don’t think so. I think it has to be something more robust, and maybe with a toggle.
What’s your take? Just as I’m telling people to use RSS readers to absorb their blogs and podcasts and the like, I’m thinking that the experience of the original site, especially in the comments department, is important to the larger media picture. True? Wrong?
(Think of this as a thought in process that I hope others will improve with their own opinions).
Pictures uploaded with plasq’s Skitch.
Blog Comments Need to Be Simple
Twice in four minutes, I ran across an interesting blog post that caused me to want to comment, and extend the conversation, and in both cases, it was just too difficult to jump through the right hoops. This baffles me. Why would you make it difficult to comment? Why would you make it hard to invite participation?
It’s like icing down the sidewalk, locking the door, and cutting the phone line in front of your store.
Make it easy for people to reach out to you. Please.
