A post and conversation at Danny Brown’s blog got me thinking about conversations I have had regarding changes in blogging and how it has gotten harder to generate comments and stimulate conversation.
Most of the time I like to follow Danny’s lead in using data to drive change but in this case I think we can go off of limited empirical evidence, personal experience as well as that of the other marketing/PR professionals I have spoken with about this.
Commenting is down because there are multiple distractions to compete with, otherwise known as multiple social media platforms.
Think about the major social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google Plus and ask yourself how much time you spend on any or all of these platforms.
When you add in the time spent visiting blogs, reading the news, taking care of your work/family obligations you can see how quickly your time can be eaten up.
So if you want to change things what do you need to do?
Bring Back ‘Old School Blogging’
Bring back ‘Old School Blogging.’
- Content length isn’t as important as quality. Back in the day we focused on quality and didn’t get stuck in conversations about long form versus short form.
- We visited other blogs and commented on them. Think of it as being similar to grabbing a cup of coffee with someone as opposed to sending them an email or calling them. It was more personal.
- We had more fun. We spent less time worrying and wondering and more time just writing.
- We focused more on building relationships and less on building our brands.
Thoughts and Ideas
Traffic is up here and I think that part of it is tied into installing Google Plus comments on the blog as well as my having increased my activity there.
I have been less active leaving comments around the blogosphere and I am going to focus on increasing that to see what sort of impact it has here.
My expectation is that it will lead to an increase in comments here not because of a tit-for-tat response but because commenting is part of relationship building and when you build relationships with people they are more inclined to spend time with you.
What about you? Do you have any comments/ideas? Share them in the comments in either the Livefyre or Google Plus boxes and let’s talk about it.
RyanKBiddulph Hi Ryan,
I think you are spot on. When we give of ourselves good things happen.
Power reminder here Josh! I feel sowing and reaping works well. Case in point; I desired to drum up traffic for my blogs through commenting. I became an aggressive commentor on Triberr and on other blogs. I noticed an increase in my comments but more importantly I boosted blog traffic and saw a nice jump in metrics. Why? Give and receive. More traffic flowed in because I helped my fellow bloggers get more traffic by commenting on their posts and aggressively promoting them.
Create and connect is my daily mantra as the C and C approach has been too darn good to me lol….
Thanks for sharing!
Ryan
http://www.cashwithatrueconscience.com/rbblog