People can say what they want: that they blog primarily for the passion of blogging, sharing but ultimately, the more positive comments you receive on your posts, the happier you are. And you can't help but feeling a little bit sad or discouraged when some of your cherished posts gets very few comments or in some cases zero comments at all.
2 of my beauty bloggers friends were noticing yesterday how the number of comments left on their blog posts had decreased, whilst the number of visits had stayed the same. Why is that? What are they doing differently? What has changed? One thing led to another, this set my twitter timeline on fire and I found myself in the middle of a very passionate debate:
When bloggers experienced a decrease in comments is it
because they've lost 'their touch' and not engaging their audience as they have in the past or could there other factors explaining the decrease of comments left
As a blog reader, do you personally feel you comment enough on the blog you read?
If not, what is preventing you from
commenting more?
And this is what you had to say on the topic:
Interesting, no?
So we have readers who don't feel their comment would bring valuable contribution to the debate, others put off by the dreaded 'captchas' and technicalities associated with posting comments, on top of everyone who feel that they are simply not enough hours in the day to comment as much as they would like to. The general consensus is that most of you feel they don't comment and wish they left more more comments on blog posts.
Where do I belong? In every category really. Since I have been reading blogs through Google reader, I find myself managing to read blogs very fast: Google reader makes it very easy for me to read, as its name suggests but it's definitely not intended to leave comments, which is my problem starts. I tend to 'star' the blogs which I prefer and would definitely comment on 'later' but am put off to click on the actual blog, and start the technical nightmare of commenting:
Like captchas was not bad enough (most of the blogs I follow - mine included - are on blogger) I find myself to press the 'send' button many times, cos the first time I pressed it it didn't send and having to wait everytime I pressed send for the confirmation from my blogger that message has successfully, confirmation which needs me to scroll up and down the page like a loonie. Even sometimes when I comment on my blog, I am having to log on again, press send, check to see if has been sent, a red button appear, I press send again, a second red button appear, then some weird stuff appears, asking me to preview (I don't want to preview the f*ckin thing god dammit, just send the wretched thing already, will you blogger, and then after the 4th time I pressed SEND I see that it had been sent ok. Needless to say that from now on, I always make sure to copy my comment before running the risk of losing in the process. Like everyone, I wish I had more time, but commenting was easier, then I would think I would spend more time commenting and make the most of it.
Time is definitely an issue and I feel some people (well I do anyway) after commenting on a certain amount of posts (let's say 10) get tired. So whilst they found your post a very interesting read, it might have come up at the wrong timing in their reading sequence: they are either reading from their phone (can you actually comment from a phone) or have already commented on other posts. So your post, however great it is, suffers that day from not being part of this selected few. This is my theory anyway. Whilst your content is amazing and comment worthy, people follow more and more blogs so your blog finds yourself in a big competition of hundreds of others popping up in your email / RSS reader / dashboard …
Also your devoted readers, inspired by their readings feel like they can bring more to the 'beauty pot' with starting their own blog as a result and find themselves to have less time to comment. Whilst I am writing all this non sense and it's 1.45am, I could have been commenting on all the blogs I've starred/favorited today, and promised myself to comment on. Sadly, I know I won't have reached my target and would have probably tweeted about your post rather than commenting on it directly.
And then you have this mismatch, as observed by jadlgw above, about the amount of comments she leaves (because she wants to and enjoys it) versus the amount of comments she gets on her blog posts. Is it fair to expect a 'satisfying' amount of comment, when you, yourself don't leave many comments? But then again, are you going to expect the girl behind Temptalia to go and comment on your blog? When would she find the time? You'd rather she kept the beauty world up to date, as it happens with the latest Mac collections rather than commenting on lots of blogs, right?
How many comments should we be expecting per blog post anyway? Whatever this desirable or expected number might be, we need to find ways to cheer ourselves up. If you are a blogger, and reading this and haven't already done so, I would strongly strongly urge you to subscribe some website which helps you tracking the amount of traffic your blog is generating. I only opened a free account to Google analytics a month ago, but if I hadn't opened an account at Sitemeter.com, I would have given up blogging a long time ago. Being able to see how many visits your blog is getting, even though it's not very much, allows to see that at least people are reading the fruit of your labour, even though the comments are not always there to show it.
Thank you so so so so so much to everyone who gave me their views on the topic. I feel it has opened my eyes. Will it stop me from being upset if a post dear to me doesn't trigger my idea of what a satisfying amount of comments is? Of course not but I am now reassured that we are all in the same boat, doing our thing, in a growing beauty blogging community.
Please cherish every comment you get, even if it's just a brief and simple one. I do. If you’re still upset, go follow @loulou699, she’ll cheer you up, in less time it would take you to decipher a captcha
