10
May

Comment Challenge Day 10 - Check yo self!

   Posted by: Greg Schwartz   in Bloggery, Professional Development

Today’s mission is to perform a comment audit on my blog. The idea is to check your blog against the Six Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog.

So let’s do it.

1. You sound like a press release.

For the most part, no. I do like the plug the show occasionally, but I don’t think I do that in an impersonal way.

2. You sound like an infomercial.

I don’t think so.

3. You sound like a know-it-all.

I’m guessing that I’m occasionally guilty of this. I do have pretty strong opinions sometimes and that might dissuade some people from entering into a conversation about them. Hard to self-diagnose though.

4. You haven’t showed them how.

I could do a better job laying out my comment policy and walking people through the moderation structure in place. I suspect that I’ll have a chance to do this over the next 21 days.

5. You haven’t created the right atmosphere.

I think I do an OK job of employing a conversational tone on this blog. Walt Crawford described my blog as having “strong voice” (pdf), by which he means that you “hear” a lot of the author in the writing. I think of this as a good thing, in terms of welcoming conversation. But again, that strong voice might have the opposite effect sometimes (see answer 2).

6. You just don’t seem that into it.

I sure hope not. When I’m not that into it, I don’t write.

The number and quality of the comments I’ve received on recent non-Comment-Challenge-related posts indicates to me that I’m doing a fair job initiating conversations. You’d tell me if I was wrong, wouldn’t you?

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15 comments so far

walt crawford
 1 

I don’t think you need to worry about #2. Your blog reflects your voice, not a used-car or Crazy Eddy sales pitch or the worst sort of infomercial.

And I love your answer to #6…

May 10th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
Steve Lawson
 2 

One thing I appreciate when making comments is a preview function. Without one, I sometimes wonder if hyperlinks, etc. will work properly in my comment. It wouldn’t keep me from commenting, exactly, but I appreciate it when it is there.

I use the Live Comment Preview plugin for WordPress. It has been a bit squirrelly in the past, but generally works well.

May 10th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Greg
 3 

Thanks, Walt. I wonder how many people reading this blog would even know who Crazy Eddie was. Brings back memories of watching way too much TV as a youngster.

Steve, that’s a pretty solid suggestion. I didn’t even consider that there’d be a plug-in for it. I wonder if you might elaborate on what kinds of squirrelly behavior you’ve seen,

May 10th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Steve Lawson
 4 

Greg, it seemed like for a WP version or two it didn’t work at all. Now, with the latest WP version and (I believe) the latest plugin version, it seems to work fine.

So it’s not like it caused problems with the blog, it just wasn’t working for a bit for no apparent reason.

May 10th, 2008 at 5:09 pm
Greg
 5 

OK, I’ve gone ahead and installed it. I’m wondering if it will mess with the Seesmic plugin at all, but I won’t get to try that out until later. Thanks for the suggestion.

May 10th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
Connie Crosby
 6 

I don’t think you sound like a know-it-all. You come off as sound knowledgeable and confident. But you are willing to listen to others’ ideas and opinions, too.

The comment preview feature is kind of cool.

Cheers,
Connie

May 10th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Connie Crosby
 7 

D’oh! Should say “sounding knowledgeable and confident.” Too distracted by the pretty words coming up in the preview. :-D

May 10th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Greg
 8 

I suppose, but you’re someone with an above average willingness to voice an opinion. I wonder if there are people who find my “knowledgeable and confident” tone sufficiently off-putting to not want to enter into conversations. I’m guessing so.

May 11th, 2008 at 12:32 am
Kevin
 9 

I think the point of ‘not showing them how’ is a trend across many blogs. Maybe we assume folks know how. Maybe we shouldn’t. I found the act of creating a comment policy (another task) to be fruitful in that it articulated what and why a person may want to join the conversation.
Take care
Kevin

May 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Anna
 10 

I think that some bloggers are better at creating an interactive community around their blog than others. I get few comments on my blog, despite having a healthy number of readers, and I’ve never been able to figure out why. Even when I ask for feedback I get nothing. I don’t seem to be suffering under any of the six reasons, so I have to conclude that it must be that my readers don’t have anything to say.

On the other hand, MT’s spam comment handling was so screwed up that maybe over time folks gave up on commenting and haven’t come back. That thought makes me sad.

May 12th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Greg
 11 

Anna, I’ve been in your boat throughout much of the life of this blog. Things have been different of late. Maybe there’s a community-building aspect, but I think I’m also just writing about a few things that people are grappling with of late (Twitter, Friend vs. friend, etc.). I expect it to die down along a similar curve as my enthusiasm for writing, which will inevitably wane.

May 12th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Kevin
 12 

I think there definitely is a community aspect to a blog and maybe this month will help Anna get a sense of how to engage her readers. Maybe she can try to do a poll, or a quick activity, and get some engagement.
Kevin

May 13th, 2008 at 5:46 am
walt crawford
 13 

(Dropping back in): Anna, as one who’s had decent success with comments, I don’t find any predictability AT ALL…well, with standard exceptions (posts about marriage, divorce, birth, new jobs, will all get lots of comments).

I’ve had posts that I thought would strike up vigorous conversations. Zip. Others that I thought were bland and unlikely to get comments. Loads of comments (well, “loads” by library-related standards).

I’ve pretty much given up on trying to predict engagement. Maybe you’ll have better luck.

May 13th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Greg
 14 

Kevin, I think it’s one thing to engage your readers, which I think Anna does. It’s getting them to engage you that’s the trick. This challenge has helped me think about some of things I might have been doing to obstruct that.

Walt, what you’re saying echoes my experience choosing topics for Unvocab. Never can quite predict what topics will get people talking and which give nothing but dead air. The consequences of being wrong in that environment are greater than here. But I think having that pressure has made me better at knowing what topics will hit here as well.

Also, expanding my network through the show and through Twitter, Facebook, etc. has brought more eyes to this blog and increased the likelihood of comments.

May 14th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Greg
 15 

Kevin, I see that I inadvertently failed to respond to your first comment in this thread. Sorry ’bout that. I’m fascinated by how many of the challenge participants recoiled at the idea of creating a comments policy and opted not to do it. I didn’t choose to do anything too formal, but felt like I articulated what I needed to. I never had a problem with anything other than comment spam anyway.

May 14th, 2008 at 10:14 am

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