Is Commenting On Blogs Dead?

The first time Uncle John told me that story I punched him in the mouth but not because I had anger management issues.

It was because after he finished explaining how anything could be real until disproven he said a boy wasn’t strong enough to hurt a man.

I figured when opportunity knocks you ought to answer the door and I didn’t want miss out on getting a free shot in because when you are a kid you are told you shouldn’t hit anyone unless you have a good reason.

Generally that good reason is couched in language like “you can hit someone if you are defending yourself or your little sister(s) but I have always been good at reading between the lines and saw this as license to take my shot.

Beatlemania isn’t what it used to be but people still like to stories about Uncle John, especially the one about how he once stopped Yoko from beating up Uncle Ringo with his own drum sticks.

But between you and me, I don’t like telling many of these stories very often because even though they make great ice breakers once you start telling them no one is interested in hearing tales about your life.

Is Commenting On Blogs Dead?

This is a conversation that comes up with more frequency than the requests to hear stories about Uncle John but it is not nearly as depressing.

Maybe a bit more boring, but not nearly as depressing as having people pretend to be interested in your life. Imagine what it is like having 983 million people snore their way through your 30 second story about your life just so they can wake up to hear you tell them what it was like to have some dead famous dude sing you a lullaby.

Anyway, the reason these conversations about commenting come up is because the elders of the blogosphere speak of a time when they would write silly posts about nothing and receive 50 comments.

Really, it happens. I know. I have seen it.

These folks stand their slack jawed while some dude named Jack talks about this post he wrote about how to hard boil eggs got 50 comments.

It is followed by a bunch of head nodding and then someone talks about how they never got that man comments but they used to average around 12 per post and now they are lucky if they get two or three.

That leads into “comments are dead” and or “I am going to kill the comments on my blog.”

Comments Aren’t Dead

Comments and commenting aren’t dead, not even close. There is as much truth in that as saying that blogging is dead.

What is the true is that commenting has slowed down and that you have to work harder to generate comments on your blog.

You can blame that upon the fragmentation that occurred with the arrival of multiple social media platforms. People will tell you they don’t comment on blogs because they are talking about things on Facebook, Twitter etc.

But I’ll guarantee that if you focus on providing interesting, entertaining and educational content you can get people to comment.

Part of the way you do that is by making it easy for them to do so and part of doing it is by asking them to. Insert a Call-to-action in a post and follow up by responding to comments.

Push to build conversation and community.

And let’s not forget the importance of commenting on other blogs.

Why His Guitar Gently Weeps

If Uncle John were around he might tell you the real story about why George’s guitar was covered in tears and how it ‘gently weeps’ was the exact opposite of what happened.

Torrential downpour created by an angry woman with drumsticks is more like it. So much for giving peace a chance.

Imagine all the people who were saved from that crazy imagery until now.

Comments aren’t dead and my advice to bloggers is even if you disagree you should still leave your comment section open.

Better to give people an opportunity and a choice than none at all.

Besides your blog should be the hub of your social media empire. If you are self hosted it is the one place you don’t run into the risks involved with being a digital sharecropper.

What do you think? Let’s talk about it in the comments.