Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog
Day 10: Do a Comment Audit on Your Own Blog
So far in the challenge, we’ve been focusing on making comments. But most of us are also bloggers and we need to consider what we’re doing to invite conversations on our own blogs. Are we doing all that we can to build a sense of community that invites people to leave us comments?
For today’s task, review this post on 6 Reasons People Aren’t Commenting on Your Blog . Then audit your blog to see if you’re falling into any of these traps. If you’re feeling particularly brave, ask a fellow blogger or even your readers to give you feedback on how well you’re doing at making people feel welcome to leave comments on your blog. Then reflect on what you’ve learned and try to address any of the issues you identify. Be sure to tag your post with "comment08."
While reading Michele Martin’s reason’s why people might not be commenting on someone’s blog, one sentence stood out for me:
Many of the commenters in Chris’s thread are complaining that they don’t get comments on their blogs, something bloggers eternally discuss
I agree with her, that the "not" getting comments is something that most new (and seasoned )bloggers seem to measure their "success" or "failure". I wonder how many bloggers gave and are giving up writing, because they believed that no ones is reading and no one is responding and joining their attempts for conversation. Isn’t that in part why the 31-Day Comment Challenge was started?
My intentions in joining the challenge were to help and mentor new bloggers… to become more aware of my own comment habits… to expand my grasp of what blogging means…… to do something that I have not felt too comfortable of doing… to go through a process and see at the end of the challenge if it taught me something that I had not anticipated or known before
While I am learning and experiencing that blogging is about that two-(many)sided conversation, I am still not willing to give up the notion that the main reason why I am blogging still IS (at least for me) about jotting down my ideas, my learning journey, and my discoveries. My blog posts serves as documentation of my lists of site links that I am encountering, hardware and software that I am using or contemplating in using. Writing my posts help me clarify in my head a strategy, a path, a mistake, a success or a pattern that I might not have seen or reflected upon without having it written down. Writing my blog posts help me becoming a better writer. Something have enjoyed doing since I was young. Writing my blog allows me to vent… it allows me to write things off my soul . That is important to me.
Maybe all this sounds too much me, me , me…but Hey, it is MY blog and I like it that way 
So, while we are in the middle of this 31-Day Comment Challenge and it all seems to be about writing comments, getting comments, becoming better at comments, reflecting on comments, etc, let’s not forget that comments should not be the ONLY reason anyone blogs.
In today’s challenge Michele Martin asks to reflect on the following reasons why visitors on your blog might not be leaving comments. She also suggests to ask your readers to give a critique on how well you are doing in these areas. If anyone would be inclined
- Do I sound like a press release?
- Do I sound like an infomercial?
- Do I sound like a know-it-all?
- Is it logistically easy to leave a comment on Langwitches?
- Have I created the right atmosphere.
- Do I not seem that into blogging?
- Do you have any other suggestion for me?
The comment challenge has a much higher percentage of K-12 bloggers than I normally follow. There seems to be a larger group of people who openly state they are blogging for self-reflection and to keep track of things.
What I have noticed is when people state/declare/defend that position, my guard goes up. Almost like when I was younger and would go visit my parents friends compared to how much more open I would feel when visiting my own. Not that I won’t say anything, but I feel like I need to be on my best behavior.
I might feel less this way if I had been reading for longer?
This is a tough issue in that as much as I know that I blog for the right reasons, I also must admit that I do sometimes crave the validation that comments offer. Traffic stats and other metrics can tell you if anyone is showing up, but comments are a much clearer indication of how well-received your message or ideas are.
But this is part of the incentive for me to add meaningful comments to other bloggers’ posts – that is, given that I know how nice it is to get feedback from readers, I try to do my part as a good netizen as often as possible.