Interesting enough, I just finished reading an awesome post by Brian Hawkins of Hot Blog Tips entitled Blogging Has Grown Just Beyond Comments and it really made me stop and think…..
Have I Noticed My Blog Comments Decreasing?
Image courtesy of David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Brian explains how you might not need to be alarmed IF you have seen a decrease. Why? Because we are networking not only on our blogs via comments but also on Twitter, Facebook Pages, Google+, and many other social networking avenues.
When I look at my own analytics on both blogs, for the most part, I stay fairly steady on my comments. Yes, they might be the same people commenting all the time with a couple new faces here are there, but they are still commenting on my blog.
Others may be reaching out to me via Twitter
They see my blog post link, click it to go read it, then come back to Twitter and reply. This strikes up conversation and usually in Real-Time versus waiting on a blog comment reply.
Some reach out to me via my Facebook Blog Pages
This is especially true for my Pibbles and Me blog, however My Girly Parts is gaining more interaction as we speak.
There is also Google+
My blog posts are shared there, not only by myself but by some of my loyal readers, they will Tag me in the post, and conversation develops from those posts!
So I don’t necessarily worry anymore like I once used to. I used to really sweat it if I didn’t get a few comments on every post.
I think another thing that has helped me in this area is, I only post 1 or 2 posts per blog, weekly. I believe, in the extremely huge blogging world, that it allows my readers a few days to come and comment on my blog posts. There are so many DAILY blog posters out there, for me, it’s not even feasible for me to comment on every single post.
However, if you look at your Page Views via whatever analytical source you’re utilizing, you will see that I am one of the people who does Read your posts, and 75% of the time will Reshare them.
Let us not forget that some of those who are using Newsletters to publish their posts.
They are also getting responses to their posts via Email.
What about those, like me, that use Paper.li or some other kind of newspaper generating program. You can enable comments there as well!
So although you might see a decrease of comments on your blog, it doesn’t necessarily mean you should worry and throw in the towel or be hard on yourself. Watch your Page Views to see the amount of traffic you are getting.
However, there is a possibility that maybe your A-Game got up and left and your readers aren’t quite as interesting in your C-Game.
Check it out on your own blogs and YOU be the judge. Let me know what you’ve found?