The Power of Comments

This comment conversation reminds me of my radio days. When I was doing contests (caller 10 wins a $100), or call-in’s (tell me about the wild critter you’ve caught in your house)…I knew that a very small percentage of our listeners would actually participate.

Research shows that well under 10% of a station’s listeners will participate. The majority of listeners just prefer to listen, even if it means listening to someone else win, or to someone else’s story. They are entertained without being part of the entertainment.

I think the same thing goes for blogs. The majority of our viewers, just like to view. They like to read our content, and the comments left by others, and that’s it!

That is….unless you are viewing this blog!

[since I am still trying to understand how best to be part of the conversation, I am cross posting this comment here, and on my blog post about commenting (link above)

Chris, while my post wasnt an anti-comments post, it was a question on how best to engage and grow the conversation from a single blog post. Comments, by definition stay on one site. I linked to your site, which prompted you to comment on mine. Perhaps someone will read your comment and write a post, or comment here, and then the story begins to grow. Dont you think there is value in that? I would rather include as many people and brains in a conversation, versus having the conversation be between one dude sitting on a hill, and a bunch of others talking to him.

Its one of the things I like about lijit (I swear not a pitch, even though I work there!). It allows me to see what my friends and their friends are writing about a particular topic, and join in the conversation by either writing a post or commenting.

Make sense? Or am I high on Christmas Spirit?

I think this is quite a creative approach to involving people in blogging. Please submit this to the Active Learning Blog Carnival http://activelearningcarnival.blogspot.com/. Submit by going to http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit_2804.html.

xOZVfX Hi! Nice site! Where is a add to favorite button& ;)
http://www.mysite.com

Comments are gravy. In my early blogging days, just writing posts was enough for me. I wondered about the public, but it was okay, I didn’t need comments, but after a while it felt lonely and it was great when someone did mention that they read my blog.
Slowly, becoming connected to writing networks has brought me to more blogs. I leave comments, I get comments back. It seems to take time and patience. I agree with some of the comments that have come before me. You have to leave comments to get them. And since I’ve been part of this challenge I am thinking about how to build rich conversations.
Bonnie

I always see your blog.
I am looking forward to renewal of your blog.
Please take a look my site, if it’s possible.

The conversation in comments just depends on the blog post, this one for example, is a good motivator. But it does something else, comments are inspiration for other posts, for other topics to discuss. To me it is not necessarily about the number of people commenting, because those few who come back on a regular basis really grow and shape the blog.