The Mo-Bettah Blog Blues or Wherefore Art Thou Comments?
By Giania • Sep 8th, 2007 at 4:10 pm • Category: RecursionToday I was all excited because I thought I had a bunch of comments. “12 comments in moderation”, I saw on my dashboard! My goodness! It was like a dream come true. A chance to find out who - if anyone - is reading, and find out their thoughts on any one of the odd topics that have so recently gone to press. The prospect of conversation sent chills down my spine like the hot breath of an eager lover on the back of my neck…
Then I went and looked at them. It was all spam! Random letters and numbers and instances of “.info”! WOE! Oh however could I get my hopes up so blindly? Truly this was a tragedy. And yet I couldn’t help but feel as though there was a lesson for me here. That lesson was in the form of a mission:
Find out what it takes to get REAL comments on the blog, not just someone trying to push rolexes and penis pills by way of comment spam.
I like to think I do all the right things.
- I mix it up on the topics so it’s not repetative and blah.
- I ping after (almost) every post, to get the blog notice through those channels. (The more people that come here, the larger the chance of replies, after all.)
- I site sources with trackbacks. (Again with the traffic.)
- I self-promote within friendly circles. (i.e. I don’t just bombard strangers with: “HI COME TO MY SITE PLX!” I save all that energy for pestering my friends.)
- I ask questions and encourage participation and feedback.
- I typically don’t hesitate to say things that others might view as wrong. (Even negative feedback is still feedback!)
If that stuff isn’t comment bait then I don’t know what is! Of course, figuring out what works is a fool’s gamble in the end, really. With a near endless stream of content put out by twice as many providers in the “blogosphere” alone (what a cheesey term that is!), it’s easy to figure out why a site such as this might fall by the wayside.
Looking at the facts:
- Aside from the Dream Logs, the content consists largely of media and reposted news.
- The dream log material itself could be better written to provide a more worthwhile reading experience.
- My habit of posting YouTube videos and describing them without really getting into any unique discussion is not unique content.
- Inconsistancy of updates. I have noted spikes in my subscriber base and not actually posted for a few days after due to time conflicts. Yet this stop in the flow of information may have been why I almost immediately lost those readers.
Neither of these things provide potential visitors with unique, desirable information. The key to comment-rich, successful blogging as I see it is anchored in providing visitors (and potential visitors) with more useful, unique and entertaining information on certain subjects than anyone else. Just changing subject matter to avoid monotony isn’t enough, but having actual content that is informative and - to a degree - exclusive is critical as well.
It is my pledge to you, gentle readers, that I will make every effort to coax you out of the wilderness and get all you little chickadees to sing. Surely there’s got to be something you’re interested in out there! (And I promise not to call you Shirley anymore.) I will also attempt to snooker in a few other writers to freshen up the air in this place.
Speaking of encouraging feedback: What would YOU like to see on this blog? Which posts have you enjoyed and which were boring and/or crap? I’ll take pretty much all suggestions.
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Comments can be difficult to gather. Although, your most commented posts should offer a clue to what people want to comment on. Personally, I don’t think I’ve had problems gathering comments. But that’s probably the benefit of being part of My Opera Community. In this community, your blog is closer connected to the rest of the community with friend lists and listing in the blogs section.
So maybe you need to connect your blog to a larger community. Mayber a AddThis would help? Here are two AddThis bookmarklets that you can add to the place you add links in your browser BTW: Bookmark Subscribe.
You should have a look at this blog post by my buddy zomg from My Opera about How to improve your blog. You should also make it easier to visit this blog from the top page of this domain. Good luck with your blog.
Oops. Seems like I should stop abusing your comments. Those bookmarklets don’t work. But look forward to when I release the delicious Opera browser button versions of those. I’ve been working on them but I need to fix them to work properly.
G, I always read but rarely comment–but that goes for most of my blogs. I enjoy most of what you post!
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