The answer to Why We Have To Bring Back ‘Old School Blogging’ is because it is a fundamental part of building stronger and deeper blog communities.
You might wonder how in an age of distractions and noise how we can do this. You might even think it is crazy to strive for 58,000 readers and I would ask you why you think that.
If you are relatively active with social media platforms you already know people who have many more followers and or subscribers. If they did it we can too.
Comments and Content Build Community
If you are an old timer you remember when blogs didn’t have to compete with any of the other social media platforms that exist today. But that doesn’t mean modern blogs don’t share anything in common with those that were around during the Jurassic period of blogging because they do.
The lurker existed then and he/she still exists now.
So the question is what can we do to encourage lurkers to delurk and how do we reach the people who don’t make it to the blog because they are spending their time elsewhere.
Well one of the newer options is to install a plugin called Comments Evolved that provides you with the ability to offer your readers the chance to comment on the blog and/or on one of those other social networks.
The installation for Comments Evolved was a simple process. Download, activate and then under settings you may need to add a couple of pieces of information. It depends on what options you want to provide for your readers.
My current set up provides tabbed options for readers to choose between Google Plus, Facebook, Livefyre and DISQUS.
What I like about this is it removes some of the roadblocks that readers encounter when trying to comment while simultaneously expanding my reach into major social networks like Google Plus and Facebook.
Expectations, Desire and Hope
Based upon what I have seen with The Google Plus Comments Experiment Revisited I expect to see continued growth in traffic and exposure because that is what has been happening.
Since I installed Google Plus comments traffic has increased by almost twenty percent and I attribute most of that to the additional exposure generated via Google Plus.
If my hope and desire are met with the response I want we’ll see even more growth as well as a substantial increase in comments. I’ll keep an eye on the results and keep you posted.
In a short time we’ll circle back and talk about whether Comments Evolved did what we hoped it would do or not.
