This is a guest post from Jen, who blogs at The Mad House, and helps run the MAD Blog Awards and Tots100:

There has been lots of discussion among bloggers about a reduced number of comments on blogs lately, which has got me thinking.

Are we getting less comments than we used to?

I am getting fewer comments on my blog than I did a year ago, and a lot of fellow bloggers tell me they are having the same experience. I don’t regularly check my stats, but for the purposes of this post, I did and noticed that although I am getting more readers than ever before, I am getting fewer and fewer comments.  Why is that?  Am I writing boring posts? Are my posts not engaging?

I don’t think so (obviously – my posts are brilliant).

When I look at my own behaviour as a blog reader, I don’t think I’m commenting any less than before, but what I am doing is spreading those comments out across more blogs.  The number of blogs I read is growing month on month – we now have more than 1,500 bloggers registered on the Tots 100, for example.  So I am reading a more diverse range of blogs and only commenting on those posts that really appeal to me. I don’t have time to comment on every blog.

The second trend I observe is that my posts get many comments now on Twitter and Facebook – people will often Tweet to let me know they thought something was a great post, but there just isn’t the volume of  comments on the blog anymore.

A third explanation is the number of people reading blog posts on their mobiles, iPads and phones – which may not allow them to use commenting systems like Disqus, so they are more likely to leave without commenting.

So how can bloggers recover their comments?

I do think many of the people who are commenting are commenting on memes and Linky posts – often these posts seem to generate enormous numbers of very short comments, which are frequently reciprocated – with everyone taking part doing the rounds and leaving one or two words on each post. I don’t tend to write those sorts of posts as they don’t suit my blog, though.

Then there are comment circles, but I confess they’re not a perfect solution in my eyes. I don’t want people to feel obliged to comment or to return a comment because I have commented on their blog. For me, it’s a short step from telling you who to comment on to telling you who to read, what to write and what shoes to wear in the morning.

I would love to know your thoughts on why you think comments on blogs are in decline – do you think comments are on the decline? Does it bother you, as a blogger?

If you were hanging around Twitter or any number of internet message boards yesterday you may have seen a link to this – a book review site that published a review of a self-published novel.

The review was a little critical, although the reviewer tried hard to find positive things to say. The author, clearly very emotionally invested in her work, took the criticism hard. To say the least. In fact, she had a little bit of a meltdown, accusing the reviewer of being a liar, and ending up swearing at some of the blog’s commenters.

Person takes criticism badly – it’s a story as old as the Internet.

Except I started seeing the link to this post popping up on Twitter and Facebook and various online forums yesterday afternoon. And by the time I visited there were over 300 comments. And most of the comments online seemed to agree this episode was pretty funny. So I started reading.

Somewhere around comment 50, I saw the first “you’re delusional” comment. Then there was a “congratulations on ruining your reputation” and a few “you’ve ruined any chance of ever being published” and “your career is over” comments.

Then there were those commenters who had gone off to look at the author’s website, her Blogger profile, her Amazon page. They downloaded sample chapters of her book and tore them apart. She was declared to be illiterate, embarrassing and unlikely to ever succeed as a writer. Her Amazon profile quickly filled up with negative comments from people who had never read her book, but just wanted to make sure the world knew that the author was a joke.

So how about now? Still funny?

I can’t imagine many people who would consider it fair or reasonable to stand in front of an aspiring author and tell her in no uncertain terms that she is embarrassing, talentless and doomed to failure. No matter what the author had done out of pride, anger or humiliation, I don’t think many of us would stand in line to be the 300^th person to laugh in her face.

So what is it about the Internet that makes this okay?

I remember reading a piece by Chris Brogan arguing that on the Internet there are two basic personality types – those who can make the leap required to understand that these pixels represent a real person, and those who can’t.

I suspect those people lining up to pour scorn on the author aren’t bad people in real life – many of the people I observe engaged in this kind of online bullying (and given that bullying can be defined as a sustained personal attack that isn’t proportionate, then that’s what this clearly is) would describe themselves as unfailingly kind and reasonable, I’m sure. But they behave in ways online that they would find abhorrent in the real world.

I remember reading another post once from a woman who worked in an IT company that’s reasonably unpopular. She explained that she always used an avatar that was a picture of her with her daughter because “It’s easy to say f— you to an icon, less so to the nice Mommy holding a baby”.

This makes me wonder whether social media needs to become more humanised, that we need to be more obvious about being people and not pixels. Or is this kind of mob activity just inevitable

*Oh, alright. Sometimes they suck. Mostly they’re okay.

I have seen a few of those ‘social media changed my life’ posts doing the rounds lately. I’m just about to hit the 7th anniversary of starting my first blog, and I’ve been wondering how blogging has changed my life. Mostly, I’d say it means I sleep less.

Rather than changing my life, I think blogging has taught me some things. Like:

1. When you create something and you’re passionate about it, it becomes really hard to draw a line and say, ‘this is when I stop working’. Hence me writing this post at 2.21am on a Friday morning. This is probably not a great long-term life strategy.
2. You can spend an hour crafting a perfect post that says just what you want it to say, or you can panic and write something in two minutes flat because you haven’t posted for a week and you don’t want your readers to think you died and your corpse is now being eaten by cats. And the second post will always, always get more comments than the first.
3. When you’re angry and emotional, it’s best to write a blog post in Word first. This means you can edit it repeatedly until you get it just right. And then you can delete it. Angry blog posts never get you anywhere. Either you’ll calm down and realise it’s not worth writing about, or you’ll realise it is worth writing about, in which case you’re now calm enough to kick ass with your logic, reason and general amazingness.  Result.
4. Blogs are magical. They have the power to make typos invisible until an hour after you hit ‘publish’ – which is usually just after some smart-arsed reader points out your mistake on Twitter or in the comments. Note: this will always, always happen if you post about grammar or spelling.
5. When you get into a groove of blogging, you can pop up post after post without much thought – it’s only when you look back a year later that you realise how many special memories you’ve captured. Don’t under-estimate the value of what you’re creating.
6. One day, if you want them to, some of the people who read your blog and comment on it will become good friends. And while PR freebies and awards and stuff are great, having someone to laugh with about your blogging adventures is worth more than anything.
7. Everyone has a view on what you should and shouldn’t do on a blog. But providing you’re doing what makes you happy, I think you should feel free to ignore everyone else. You should particularly ignore anyone who tries to lecture you about ‘dignity’ or what’s ‘appropriate’. I can confidently say that life is way too short to worry about that sort of thing.
8. At least once every six months you will have a meltdown and want to delete your blog. Take a day off. Talk to some people who say things like, “What’s a blog, again?” This will help you to regain the proper perspective. But if something isn’t making you happy, there’s no shame in taking a change of direction.
9. It takes two people to make a row. That means someone can say all the mean things they like about you, but if you’re ignoring them, then they’re just some idiot swearing to themselves on the Internet.  Try to imagine them dressed shambolically on a street corner, holding a can of super-strength lager and shouting at strangers as they walk by. Not so intimidating after all, eh?
10. Bloggers are mostly a really friendly bunch of people but business is business. So try not to take it personally when that client you blog about is approached by another blogger trying to undercut you, or if a blogger attempts to undermine your work or poach your business. Take it as a compliment that they clearly see you as being more successful than them, and next time, be a little smarter about what you share online.

This is a guest post contributed by Hayley, who blogs at Simply Hayley:

I’m a blogger.

I run a blog called Simply Hayley, which is probably what you’d call a ‘Mummy blog’. I am very friendly to PRs and I really enjoy working with agencies on campaigns, posts and events.

But I’m not a journalist. And a lot of the time, PRs act as though I am.

Take yesterday for example. I was contacted by a PR agency and asked whether I would like to write about a video game. Great – my little boy loves video games, and I’m quite keen too. So I replied and said I’d love to review the game.

Except there’s a problem. The PR told me that they didn’t actually have any copies of the game. They might have some in a few weeks but these would only be provided to bloggers who had expressed interest by writing posts about the game. If my post was good enough, the PR said it might be promoted on the company’s Facebook page.

This would work fine if I was a journalist – magazines and websites often write about things they haven’t tested for themselves. I know that journalists and editors will often use a press release in its original format, or use it as the basis of a story.

Bloggers don’t do this. Our blogs are a personal space where we write about our families, pregnancy, food, photography, friends and technology. Our content is almost entirely personal and the content on my blog is my life, in my words.

So why would I write about something I haven’t experienced?

I wish PRs would understand that I don’t get paid for writing my blog, in the way journalists are paid for writing articles. I don’t have deadlines, the way a journalist does, but I do need to fit my writing around my family and my own work.

Many of the PRs I work with understand this. They understand that bloggers won’t:

- Write something for nothing
- Write about something they haven’t experienced
- Write about something that doesn’t interest or excite them
- Run a competition if it leaves them out of pocket
- Write about something that’s not relevant to their blog or readers

So, if you offer a blogger a chance to write about a great new product you have coming out, and you want the blogger to say how wonderful that product is, and you aren’t going to pay the blogger, or compensate them for their time, or even let them SEE the product – what are the chances they will say yes please?

I think you’ll get very few positive responses – and that’s what happened to the gaming company yesterday – most of the bloggers I spoke to on the Blogger.Ed forums who had received the offer had also declined it.

Ultimately, PRs need to remember that while there are lots of journalists who are bloggers there are also lots of bloggers who are NOT journalists, so won’t want to do things the way that journalists do them.

This is a guest post contributed by Pippa, who writes a fantastic blog called A Mother’s Ramblings – Pippa was winner of the Best Family Fun Blog at the 2010 MAD Blog Awards, and is a regular video blogger. We asked her for her top tips about creating memorable, and entertaining video blog posts:

The old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words has new meaning when you start thinking about adding Video blogging (or vlogging) to your blogging repertoire.

Just like a traditional written blog post, vlogging is a chance for you to show those who read your blog just what was going on at a specific moment in time, or even what is on your mind.

I have used video in blog posts to show moments of our lives that words just couldn’t describe, such as Baby Boy taking his first few steps or the amusement that we have together as a family. They can be used to make reviews more entertaining or just to give some light hearted relief!

To start making vlogs all you really need is something to record on.

There are plenty of different tools that can be used such as a webcam, or a camera with video function, or even a video camera such as a Sony Bloggie or a Flip. If you have a phone with a video function, that will work, too. Whatever you feel most comfortable using or have available to you is fine.

As you can tell, I don’t think there are really any rules to vlogging (you can do what you like) but I do have some tips to help you make the best video that you can:

• Decide what you want to talk about beforehand and if you feel more comfortable write notes with bullet points of the things you absolutely want to include, or even a full script, just to keep you on track. Not that I ever waffle…
• Be yourself. No seriously, don’t try to be someone else or be something that you are not. When the real you shines through you will create something magic! And whilst we are on it don’t be afraid to do something different if that is what you want.
• Most people, when talking on camera for the first time, talk too fast. Talk slower than you think you need to, and try to leave pauses here and there to let people catch up.
• Don’t worry about seeming too professional, that will come in time. The um’s and ah’s will slowly stop (at least that is what happened when I did a radio show every week!) the more video blogs you make.
• If you are filming yourself talking to camera, make sure that you are in the shot (unless you are anonymous!), that you are lit well and that you can be heard. There is nothing worse than checking back afterwards and realising that the camera has been focused on your right ear. If you have one, consider using a tripod as this will help with the positioning for the camera.
• Do a quick check of what’s behind you before filming. You really, really don’t want this video to be the thing that shows your boss what sort of lingerie you like because half of it is drying on the radiator behind you.
• Be aware of privacy issues, too – if you’re filming at the table, are there envelopes there with your name and address showing? Can you see through the window to see the name of your road? Do photos show the name of the school your kids attend? Spend two minutes just checking you’re happy with everything that will appear on screen before you hit ‘record’
• If you are behind the camera, try not to use the zoom unless absolutely necessary – on a small picture, zoom quickly becomes really disorienting for the person watching. The same rule applies to using a pan or tilt shot – less is more. It’s better to physically move closer to something if needed.
• Do keep an eye on length. A video blog really should be less than five minutes in length, because otherwise people start to drift off, or even worse click the little x to close the window!
• There is no reason why if you want to you can’t film something twice. If you are talking to the camera then you can film as many times as you want. It is really simple to use video software to edit the finished videos together.
• Once your video is recorded, you can use simple programmes like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to edit together your clips, or add titles and music.
• Next, you need to upload your video to the Internet. You can upload video clips to Facebook, or to public video sites like YouTube, Vimeo or Google Videos. Be aware that uploading can be REALLY slow, and may take several hours.
• Once the upload is complete, you will be able to view your video on the YouTube website, but you can also copy what’s called the ‘embed’ code next to your video – if you paste this code into a post on your blog, the video will be embedded, as we have done in this post.

Of course you can ignore all of this advice, and randomly film anything you like, just like I do…like, me, disco dancing in a lift at Butlins.

Since the OFT ruling requiring bloggers, blogging communities and content networks to clearly disclose when they have been paid for writing a post,  there has been lots of chatter about how exactly bloggers in the UK should tackle the issue of disclosure.

If you don’t accept any kind of payment in return for posting, then it’s easy enough to post a blanket policy or ad-free logo in the sidebar.

Others offer a blanket statement advising readers to assume EVERYTHING is paid for – take a look at Tim Ferris for a completely brilliant example of this approach (one of Tim’s badges is used to illustrate this post).

However, most of us fall somewhere between the two – accepting the odd advertisement or reviewing free samples from time to time. In that case, you probably need to disclose on a post-by-post basis – but how can this be done?

You could simply add a disclosure statement to the end of a post (this is the approach I take at Who’s the Mummy, and is similar to the sort of thing done in journalism):

Disclosure: I received payment in exchange for publishing this post OR

Disclosure: Company X reimbursed my expenses for attending this eventsin

Another option, if you want something easy and internationally recognised is the badges produced by cmp.ly.

This is a set of five standard disclosure images that tell readers clearly which sort of post this is – there are badges for posts that are paid for, reviews of samples and posts about business clients, for example. There’s also a sixth badge which you can customise, if you sign up for an account.

What I personally like about cmp.ly is that the badge is independent and universal – you’re not aligning yourself with any particular blogging organisation or site, so the badges are easily recognised and understood by those outside a specific community or audience.

Do you have any other good ways of approaching disclosure on your blog?

Back in my magazine editing days, I once needed a file on a colleague’s computer – but he wasn’t there. So I guessed his password. It was his daughter’s name.

One of my friends used to hack into her cheating boyfriend’s email to get the proof he was having an affair – his password was his dog’s name.  Another time, I worked with a client who used ‘qwerty’ as a password.

If you’re a blogger, it’s important to have a secure password to your blogging account – even if only because you’re legally responsible for everything that ends up on that blog.

So if you’re using your birthday, your child’s name, your pet’s name or similar then I wanted to tell you about how to make a STRONG password that you won’t forget easily.

First of all, think of a sentence or phrase that’s meaningful to you, and memorable. Let’s say you love a particular line of dialogue from Top Gun – and who doesn’t? “I feel the need, the need for speed.”

We can easily turn this line into a series of letters: iftntnfs

That’s good – but we can make it better still by turning the letters that are in the first half of the alphabet into capitals – mixing upper and lower case makes a password more secure. So we’d have:

IFtntnFs

That’s even better, but we can add another layer of complexity by turning some of those letters into numbers – so an ‘I’ can easily become a ‘1’ while an ‘s’ is a ‘5’

Now we have:

1FtntnF5

And just for good measure, we can add a character into this – I think Tom Cruise’s line deserves an exclamation point at the very least. So we end up with the following password, which is almost impossible for someone to guess, but at the same time, very easy to remember:

1FtntnF5!

Simple. Now there’s no excuse for your password to be ‘fluffy’. Is there?

It’s About the SEO, Stupid.

When we set up blogs, it’s because we have something to say. But more than that, I think it’s because we want to be heard. “Listen to me,” we shout into cyberspace, “My opinions are worth your time.”

Some blogs spend a lot of energy shouting about their blogs on Twitter, and in blogging forums. That’s great – but you’re shouting at other bloggers most of the time. If you want to be heard (and read) by people who don’t write blogs (and realistically, that’s at least 99 percent of the world) then you need to understand SEO.

Search engine optimisation means organising your content in a way that makes it easy for people to find that content using search engines.  It can all seem a bit geeky and there’s something a bit uncool about admitting we want a larger audience (“Oh, I’m just doing it for the creative outlet,” you say. “Really? I’m doing it for shallow fame and the validation of strangers,” I reply.)

Let’s Begin at the Beginning

Imagine your perfect visitor landing on your website, after finding you through Google. What did they type into the search box to find you?

Those things your visitors put into Google are known as your keywords and phrases. You might have some global keywords that describe your entire blog, like Midland Mums or Cooking with Kids. You might also have keywords for specific posts, such as ‘birthday parties’ or ‘smartphone’.

Choosing keywords

The interesting thing with keywords is that some words are searched for more than others. And it’s not always easy to guess which keywords will bring you hundreds of new visitors, and which will bring nothing but tumbleweed.

There’s a fairly simple way to find out how often a keyword is searched for on Google Adwords.  Just enter your possible keywords and it will give you details of how many times that term is searched for globally and locally. This can help you quickly identify the most popular, relevant keyword.

Keyword density

When you have chosen a keyword, you want to get the best from it – and that means using it in the right places on your blog (or post), and with the right frequency. As a rule of thumb, using keywords near the start of your blog posts is a good idea. If you use a keyword in a post title, try and use the keyword near the start of the title. Use the key word within the post in headings, and image tags and file names, if possible.

If you’re search-optimising a blog post, then try and use the keyword or phrase at least three times in the post, and definitely use it in the first sentence. Don’t over-use the phrase though – you’re likely to be flagged as spam.

Using links to boost SEO

Let’s assume we are creating content that we want to optimise for the key phrase ‘best Christmas movies’. We have identified it’s a good key phrase, and we’ve inserted it into the post URL, the header, sub-headings and image tags. We’ve included it in the text of the post, and in the excerpt.

We can boost the SEO value of the post by linking to it from elsewhere in the blog, or on forums, or other websites. Crucially, whatever link you create should use the key phrase as the link anchor text. Rather than a link saying ‘click HERE for the best Christmas movies’ you should say ‘Click for Best Christmas Movies’

Within a single blog, you can adopt what’s known as ‘link clusters’. So when you write your post about the ’10 Best Ribena Adverts’ and want to attract people searching for ‘Ribena’, make a point of going through your archives and adding links to that post. Each link should use anchor text that incorporates the key word ‘Ribena’. Every time you write a post in future about soft drinks, remember to link back to that great post you wrote about Ribena.

Isn’t this just a lot of hard work?

When you read this kind of post, you might think to yourself, “It’s a bit like hard work, isn’t it? I get loads of traffic from Stumble Upon and Twitter.”

Sure, but those people are just browsing for content. That’s great and all, but how much cooler to have visitors who are actively LOOKING for the stuff you’re writing about? And how great would it be to get new readers for just a minute of extra time spent composing your blog post?

I don’t search-optimise every blog post I write. Just those that I think will be useful to a wider audience, and might help me get new readers. And for those posts, I would say this very basic SEO stuff takes no more than a minute or two, but will result in additional traffic on the blog for weeks and months to come.

Step 1: Create a Unique Voice

The first stage in increasing visitors to your blog is deciding what your blog is. If you’re a parent blogger, there are a thousand other parent blogs out there – why should I read yours?

That sound intimidating but the best advice I can give is to make your blog YOURS. Write about things that you genuinely find interesting, or funny, or infuriating and there will be an audience out there that shares your perspective. I remind myself that if I think that hanging a monkey out of a car window is amusing, someone out there will feel the same way. Or they’ll disagree completely – which is just as much fun.

I also advise bloggers to write as close to the way they talk as possible – use your voice, your words, your style – it will make your blog unique, without you needing to try things for effect. Blogs that aren’t authentic are almost never as engaging as those where readers feel they can connect with the author.

Once you have a voice and an opinion, think of what your blog is. Can you describe it in a sentence? Consistency will help you build an audience better than jumping from one idea to another. My blog, for example, is about ‘bad parenting and weird kids’.  So you know what to expect from my posts. Other blogs have a point of view, or offer advice, or provide information to a specific community. There’s no one ‘right’ way to do this stuff.

Step 2: Join in with a Community

Personally, I think there’s a bit too much focus sometimes on being part of a ‘community’ in blogging. Sure, I blog partly for the community, and I think connecting with other bloggers on forums like Blogger.Ed can provide great friendship and lots of advice and support for bloggers – but ultimately I want non-bloggers to read and enjoy my blog, too. Still, when you’re new, being active in the community helps to raise your profile and bring you new readers. Things to try include:

• Commenting on other blogs – try to read a few posts rather than drive-by commenting
• Linking to other blogs in your posts – especially people you admire
• Take part in carnivals and workshops – good way to build up links and discover new blogs
• Use Twitter to get to know other bloggers – and to promote your own blog content
• Use LinkedIn and Facebook to build your network – a community doesn’t just mean other bloggers, you can access a wider online community, too
• Offer guest posts to other blogs – look for a blog with an audience that’s 75% different to your own for the best results.

Step 3: Make your Content Sticky

Having a sticky site doesn’t mean having adult content – it just means visitors stick around to read more after looking at one post or page. Simple ways of making a blog stickier include:

• Highlight your best content with links and buttons (“My Top Ten Posts”)
• A clean design that lets people see plenty of content on one screen
• Keep key content above the fold, so it’s visible without people scrolling down
• Use LinkWithin or ‘you might also like’ at the end of posts to automatically suggest similar posts to readers
• Respond to comments  - it’s simple, but it’s the best way to make people engage with you and your site
• Flag upcoming content to keep people coming back – post things in 2 parts, promote upcoming competitions, ask a question and say you’ll write a follow-up based on the comments

Step 4: Promote your Content

The greatest blog in the world needs a little PR to ensure the world knows about it. Use social media to let people know about your new content:

• Use Twitter to promote new posts on your blog – but I’d advise against auto-Tweets
• Register your blog with Networked Blogs to let people read in Facebook
• Add ‘bookmark this’ and ‘share this’ buttons to your posts
• Add your blog name to your website, email, business card, stationery – anywhere you can think of!
• Link in to larger brands and organisations when you review their products – Tweet them a link, or post your review on their
• Facebook page

Step 5: Search Engine Optimisation

• SEO always sounds scary but it really just means creating content that people will find when using search engines.
• Create titles that describe your content well for search engines – How to Organise a Sleepover, Things to do in Manchester with Kids, for example.
• Use link clusters within your blog – I’ll post about this in more detail next week, but this means if you write a post about ‘sleepovers’ then ensure you link to that post elsewhere on your blog, and make the hyperlink text ‘sleepovers’.
• Always make your links include the post title NOT just a number (as is often the case with Wordpress blogs)
• Use categories to help optimise your content for search – use the category names to help describe the content of your blog.