Archive for the Category »Comments «

Aug

The Game Of “Either – Or”

Barbara Swafford

In addition to making money, most bloggers want two things.

Traffic

BOXES The Game Of Either Or

Comments

Unfortunately, both depend on the actions of others, and those “others” are often fellow bloggers.

Today’s Lesson

When bloggers make the rounds to other blogs, they’re mentally asking themselves questions and/or making choices. For example,

Do I have time to read this post in its entirety? Or will I skim it?
Does it appear the blog author wants my opinion?
If so, did they ask for it? Or is it implied?
If I leave a comment, will it add value to the post?
Is this post worthy of being promoted on my favorite social media site?

As blog authors, we can help make those decisions easier.

Such as,

Are we asking for comments?

Did we end our post with a question? Or does our post appear so “complete”, it sends a subliminal message comments aren’t welcome?

How easy is it for others to leave a comment?

Does the commenter have to register or jump through hoops to pass the security features of our blog? Or have we made the process of commenting as simple as possible?

How easy have we made it for other bloggers to promote our work?

Are we including buttons which take our visitors directly to Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon? Or do we expect them to “figure it out” on their own time?

Is our post worthy of being shared?

Does is hold value others can benefit from? Is it grammatically correct and void of typos? Are the facts correct?

If a reader lands on our home page (www.ourblog.com) do they have to click again to read the full post?

Are we using excerpts and the “continue reading/more” feature? If so, does this feature make it easier for our visitors to read our blog posts?

If we’re showing a post in its entirety on our homepage and the reader does NOT click through to the post, does our homepage show the Retweet button or an application which will make it EASY for someone to share our article?

Or does sharing our post require additional work on our readers part?

Are we asking others to promote our posts on their favorite social media site?

Or are we assuming our visitors are mind readers?

Truth be told, we can’t/shouldn’t expect our visitors to read, comment on, AND promote our blog posts each time we publish something new.

Just like with us, their time is limited.

If we’re lucky, they’ll do one; comment OR promote.

But usually not both.

Today’s Assignment

If you could only pick one, what would it be?

To receive comments?

To have your post promoted on a social media site?

I’d love to hear why you picked what you did.

P.S. This post was inspired by what social media consultant Vered, shared in her comment on the Call Me A Hypocrite post:

…When time is short, I promote posts that I like on social media…

Thank you Vered.

Category: Archives, Blogging Lessons, Comments, Increase Traffic, Plugins and Widgets, Writing Tips 38 Comments

Aug

Call Me A Hypocrite

Barbara Swafford

I enjoy reading other blogs, seeing what changes bloggers are making to their sites and watching the growth of my blogging buddies.

I like to see other bloggers succeed and it thrills me when I see comments stacking up on their blog posts.

I know the blog author is ecstatic, but sadly my name isn’t always in that list of commenters. call me a hypocrite post graphic Call Me A Hypocrite

Sometimes, time is not on my side.

Today’s Lesson

I wrote a blog post in 2008 which discussed blog etiquette. One of the items I included in the list was,

If someone visits your blog, and leaves a comment, make time to visit their blog as well. It’s common courtesy. If you cannot identify with their most current post, dig through their archives and find one you can leave a short comment on.

In the beginning, I did that. Religiously.

Each time someone commented on my blog, I visited them, subscribed and reciprocated with a comment, too.

The number of blogs in my reader was growing and I began to spend more of my blogging time visiting and commenting.

As I added more bloggers names to my “New Blog Of The Week” series, my reader began to bulge with new blog posts. (The series ended with 90 bloggers being showcased.)

More times than I can count, due to time constraints, I would “mark all as read” and start fresh.

When following blogs in my reader didn’t work anymore, I switched my tactic and went back to trying to visit everyone who commented on my posts.

Unfortunately I couldn’t keep up.

I had broken my own rule, and I felt shame.

I felt like a hypocrite.

If I knew then (when I wrote the blog etiquette post) what I know now, I would have worded that differently, or added a disclaimer* and said, “if time permits”.

It’s not that I don’t care when you post something new, it’s that my time is needed elsewhere.

Thus, if you don’t see me commenting on each of your posts, know it’s not you. It’s me.

You’re never far from my thoughts, and fortunately I know right where to find you.

That said, I understand if you’re in the same position and don’t have time to read my posts and/or comment here.

Today’s Assignment

Do you reciprocate each comment you receive on your blog?

When time is short, do you skip commenting or have you found a technique which allows you to do it all?

Care to share?

*I’ll be adding a link to this post.

Category: Archives, Blogging, Blogging Etiquette, Blogging Lessons, Comments 75 Comments

Aug

Beating A Dead Fish

Barbara Swafford

I don’t know how many blogs are out there, but I know it’s in the millions.

I don’t know how many topics there are to blog about, but I’d guess that’s in the millions, too.

Can you imagine if the world wide web limited the amount of blogs allowed for each topic?

Fortunately they don’t and we’re free to write about anything we want.

Hence, we find many bloggers publishing posts on the exact same subject.

Just like I do.

Today’s Lesson

The last thing I planned to do was have a blog about blogging. After all, when I started there were already hundreds (or thousands) of blogging blogs out there.

Thinking back, I could have kept this blog private since I was just writing down what I was learning, but at the time my thoughts were, “What the heck. Make it public. Maybe I’ll get a visitor or two.”

And eventually I did.

When that happened, I felt there was no turning back.

So there I was, blogging about blogging; a topic that gets written about so often, I sometimes felt I was beating a dead fish.

I realized I needed to approach blogging about blogging from a different perspective, and since I’m not into writing a lot of “How To” blog posts, I knew I had to do kick it up a notch. Experiment. Take a risk.

So what I’ve done is made this blog about you by asking you how you feel about different blogging topics and how you view things in blogosphere.

You share your perspective and those who visit and read the comments, learn from many bloggers, not just one.

In some ways it doesn’t matter what I write; I’m just the conduit which leads visitors to your view point.

And when they arrive, lessons are learned, connections are made and I no longer feel I’m beating a dead fish.

I see that as a win-win.

Today’s Assignment

Do you think some topics get beat to death by bloggers?

If you’re blogging about the same topic as others, how do you keep your content fresh and original?

Care to share?

P.S. I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your continued support and thoughtful comments. This blog wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for your loyalty which is something I truly appreciate.

Category: Archives, Blogging, Blogging Lessons, Comments, Writing Tips 52 Comments

Aug

My Fave Five

Barbara Swafford

We can spend hours and hours searching for tools which will make blogging easier for us, or we can ask other bloggers what they use and like.

Today I’m sharing five of my favorite blogging tools.

Today’s Lesson woopra homepage image

Although I continue to compare statistical programs, my favorite stats tracker is Woopra.

I’ve been using Woopra for over two years now and thoroughly enjoy all it offers. As the photos show, it’s colorful and has loads of options.

For blogs and websites with under 30,000 pages views per month, it’s free. After that, an upgrade is required (rates start at $4.95 per month).

Some of Woopra’s features are:

Live, real time tracking
Real-time analytics
Ability to manage multiple blogs
Deep analytic and search capabilities
Live chat
Rich user interface

Woopra also offers a plugin so you can easily review your Woopra stats from your dashboard, plus they also provide a desktop application for Windows, Mac & Linux, which I highly recommend.

A good spam blocker is essential to blogging.

I use Akismet which is preloaded in WordPress, in conjunction with Bad Behavior. If you look at the footer of this blog, you’ll see how Bad Behavior stopped over three thousand spam comments in the last week before they reached my spam filter. How cool is that?

CommentLuv is my all time favorite plugin.

I like how it rewards those who comment by adding a link to their latest post. With a catchy sounding title, chances are others will click through and this added exposure can possibly increase your readership, as well.

Gravatars, or avatars are another blogging favorite of mine. I like how just by using a small photo helps to brand us in blogosphere as well as on social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook. The power of avatars was proven when we played a guessing game in the “Who’s Who In Blogosphere” post.

LinkWithin is a new favorite of mine. The thumbnails it produces and displays at the end of each post adds a little bit of pizazz, plus may inspire our readers to dig deeper into our blogs. Since adding it to this site and The Blog Boutique, I’ve seen an increase in my page views.

So there you have it. My fave five.

How about you?

Today’s Assignment

What blogging tools, plugins, or widgets can’t you live without?

Care to Share?

Category: Archives, Blogging, Blogging Lessons, Branding, Comments, Plugins and Widgets, Spam 45 Comments

Aug

Size Matters With Comments Too?

Barbara Swafford

As I was working behind the scenes on the blogs, adding and deleting plugins, I ran across an interesting one. It’s named Greg’s Comment Length Limiter.

The premise behind this plugin is to limit the amount of characters a person who comments can enter. As they type their comment, the counter shows how many characters they have left remaining.
limit the number of characters in a comment

On the plugin page it states, in part,

Readers may be discouraged from commenting themselves (or reading comments at all) when they see very long entries left by others, and during times of high load, the significant performance overheads associated with retrieving and displaying long comments can slow even the speediest dedicated servers.

From the perspective of SEO (search engine optimization), very long comments also dilute the impact of the author’s original post by relegating it to a small proportion of the overall content available on the page.

Interestingly the plugin has been downloaded over 4000 times.

Today’s Lesson

Since we have been talking about post length, I thought it was ironic I landed on a comment length limiter.

Who knew?

With all of us enjoying comments from fellow bloggers, I would think the length of their comment(s) is the least of our concern.

The way I see it, if someone wants to leave a long comment on this blog, I have no problem with that. As I’ve said in the past and show in my welcome message, it’s in the comment section where most of this blog’s value lies.

I throw an idea out there and all of you contribute your thoughts. For myself and those reading the comments, there’s much to be gained.

I thought of how a person who is commenting might feel knowing their words have to be limited. As each character is entered, the counter is decreasing and possibly putting undue pressure on the commenter. I know for me, I’d be less likely to comment even though I normally don’t leave long comments.

Or, I might just say, “Great post” to keep it short.

What say you?

Today’s Assignment

Would you consider using a plugin which limits the number of characters a visitor can contribute?

How would you feel if a favorite blog of yours used this type of plugin?

Care to share?