It’s been another busy week here at BWAB and for me in my real life. As the week comes to a close, it’s time to recap what we’ve learned.

This week’s posts included:

1) A.S.K. Liz – How do You Inspire Your Readers To Join Your Community
2) New Blog Of The Week – Writer Dad
3) Parties, Spam and Hanging Chads
4) Self Promotion From The Archives

Behind the scenes I’ve been experimenting with the following plugins.

1) Liz Strauss’ Comment Count Badge See mine in the right sidebar.

It’s an easy plugin to download, use and configure. For details and screen shots, check out Lorelle’s blog post titled:My Comment Count Is Bigger Than Your Comment Count

2) The What Would Seth Godin Do (WWSGD) plugin is shown on the top of each post.

It’s a typical download, and once activated the message in the rectangular box and easily be changed. To witness how other bloggers are using this plugin, check out Catherine Lawson’s great ideas.

3) Ozh’s Absolute Comments lets you reply to comments directly from your “comments” screen.

With this plugin you can answer one comment at a time. If you choose to answer more than one, the only way I’ve found to accomplish that is by entering your replies directly on the post screen.

To read more on comments, check our Joanna Young’s post titled: 10 Practical Ways To Boost Blog Comments and Conversation

Today’s Assignment

To start off this weeks “Open Mic”, I have two questions for all of you.

1) Are you more apt to read a blog if the RSS feed reader count shows a high number?

2) With the introduction of Liz’s Comment Count Plugin, would the display of comment counts influence you to join in on the conversations?

The floor is yours. You know the rules.

Questions, comments and concerns are welcome.

Have Fun!

Keep it Clean!

And don’t forget to either check the “subscribe to comments on this post” box, or subscribe to my comments RSS feed (upper right sidebar), so you can follow along.

What an exciting week it’s been. We just concluded the second round of interview topics with Lorelle (of Lorelle on WordPress) and learned:

1) Revisitng old posts can provide fresh content

2) How to Manage our feed readers

3) And then we Wooped it up.

4) On Tuesday we welcomed our first teenage blogger to the NBOTW series

On to the Free ‘n Easy Friday Finds (FEFF).

If you didn’t follow the comment thread on Wednesday’s post, Lorelle stopped by and shared a link for anyone who uses Firefox and the Greasemonkey Scripts Extension which will help speed up our reading/commenting time. I used it last night while visiting blogs and estimate I shaved 20 minutes off of my visiting and commenting time. It’s fabulous.

Lorelle has written a post detailing the use of this script.

I’ve also been cleaning house (no, not my home, although that needs it, too). I’ve been tidying up my blog by removing the monthly archives list (it was 17 months long), taking off all affiliate ads (In over a year they haven’t made me a dime), and for my recent commenters, I removed the snippets. My “Recent Commenters” now shows your avatar and name with hopes of giving you more name recognition and traffic to your blogs.

Although it’s my blog, it’s all about you!

I hope you like the changes.

Have a great weekend!

Here’s her response.

5) In a post for Blog Herald on preventing blog burn-out, you stated you follow over 350 blogs in your feed reader. What determines which blogs you follow and which posts you read? And do you do what most bloggers confess to, and scan articles without reading word for word?

Of course I scan. I couldn’t function otherwise. Most people scan. That’s a normal reading behavior and doesn’t apply to bloggers specifically. We all scan blogs, newspapers, magazines, even books. For me with that many blogs to track, I have to in order to survive. However, when I boil it down to really important articles, I read them thoroughly, digesting all of it, as do we all when things of interest confront us.

What determines the blogs I follow and the posts I read? Depends.

Every Wednesday I publish the WordPress Wednesday News covering a wide range of WordPress news, tips, events, and topics. Thus, I have a huge list of WordPress-related blogs that I have to track in order to generate that weekly post. Are they blogs I would track normally? No. Most of them are BORING and dull, but I love geek talk, so I find something interesting in all the code babble, too. It’s my job, and it helps to enjoy even the dull stuff.

I have a wide range of subject categories I track, though not as often as I do the weekly WordPress news items. I track blogs about writing, science, science fiction, gardening, eco-building, environmental issues, nature, knitting, cooking, genealogy, web analytics and SEO, web design, blogging, and the news. I also have a few favorite friends that I track through their blogs. My list is no different from other people as I track the things I’m interested in, monitoring industry news, tips, and information.

As to which blogs make it into my feeds, I think that I’m also like other people. Subject matter dictates inclusion. I have very few blogs I will track that aren’t focused on a specific subject as an expert. I track some genealogy blogs because they write about their research and I can learn about the tips and techniques they use to uncover their family’s history, but if they spend too much time rattling on about their broken down car, family, marriage, work, or ranting about politics and things of little or no interest to me, I’m gone.

To end up in my feed reader you have to feed me. You have to give the information that brought me to your site in the first place. You have to keep providing me with the information I can use or you lose.

Today’s Assignment

What determines which blogs make it into your feed reader?

How do you manage your feed reading time?

To avoid redundancy, the subject of scanning posts was addressed in a recent article titled: Bloggers Flunk The Reading Assignments. If you would like to share how you feel knowing others are scanning the posts you work so hard on, please feel free to leave a comment below.

Have you ever noticed the majority of visitors to your blog only comment on your most recent post? Even your loyal readers aren’t digging to find more of your writings.

If they are, they often don’t comment.

Why is that?

Today’s Lesson

As bloggers we’re continually publishing new posts.

As our new posts are pinged, our RSS feed readers/visitors come on over, may leave us a comment, and leave.

Many may not take time to read more than the current post, leaving our older posts buried in our archives collecting dust.

Much of what may actually be our best writings gets forgotten.

When I look at my blog, I’ve written over 300 posts.

The ones that are most popular (based on comments) are listed in my sidebar under “What Others Are Reading”. I also include my recently written posts, related posts and most recently, random posts (lower left sidebar).

I try to make it easy for my readers to find previous posts, however, it’s rare I get a comment on an older post. When I do, it’s often the result of a search engine “find” or an inbound link (to an older post).

With that being said, I’ve come to the realization if our current post doesn’t hold value, we could lose visitors.

What if your most recent post isn’t your best, or even most popular post?

Might a reader show up, and never come back?

I believe sometimes they do.

Today’s Assignment

If you look at your current blog post from the eyes of a visitor, what do they see? Keep in mind, RSS readers are not necessarily coming in on your home page. Often they are only seeing the “post” page.

How easy would it be for them to find older posts of yours if they chose to “dig around” your blog?

Are you seeing this trend too? Visitors comment on your current posts, but your older posts go untouched?

How do you entice your visitors to “dig”?

Blogging reminds me of each of us, stepping up on our virtual soapbox and telling others what we think/feel.

Some bloggers tell stories of their day, and tie a lesson in life to it.

Others do tons of research and share their findings

A lot of bloggers share from their experiences, and teach their readers.

And then there are others who write to push people’s “buttons” trying to get a reaction.

Often bloggers are a combination of all of the above.

Today’s Lesson

Shortly after I started blogging, I read that controversial posts can bring tons of traffic to your site.

I thought of ways to write a controversial post, and for my Observation Mountain blog, the closest I came was “Should Smokers Pay A Higher Insurance Premium”. It got two differing comments (both from people who didn’t have blogs (or didn’t leave an address) That blog doesn’t get a lot of comments, so it didn’t surprise me.

When I wrote about profanity on this blog, (which wasn’t meant to be controversial). It got the most attention. Not so much in the comment section but other bloggers used it as inspiration for a post of their own. They said if they want to use curse letter words in their blogs, it’s their propagative, it’s “freedom of speech”. I don’t have a problem with what others do. I just don’t use, or allow profanity on my blogs, and don’t read blogs that are laced with it.

Creating controversy isn’t my nature. I want to help people with my words, and make them think. Sometimes I may make one pass around the “pot”, but most of the time it’s only a blip on the radar screen.

Hunter recently wrote a post, 10 Reasons Japan Is Better Than America which when I read it, didn’t think it was THAT controversial, but his comment section exploded with snide remarks.

Months ago Ian Denny wrote a post titled “The Best Bloggers Are Left Handed” . That too, created hostility.

Catherine Lawson is known to be controversial. When she wrote a post titled: “Is StumbleUpon Going Down The Tubes”, one comment said “go die”, and other commenters agreed.

Controversy will almost always get a Digg or Stumble. Traffic will often soar, as well as RSS feed reader counts.

What you have to ask yourself is, are you ready to defend your viewpoint and handle the negative comments?

Today’s Assignment

Have you ever written a controversial post? Did you see your traffic soar?

Would you consider writing a controversial post? Could you handle the negative comments?

Or, do you prefer to blog quietly in your own words, and stay away from conflict?