Blog comments — What makes you decide to chime in?
I was recently reading the comments to A litter and a question on Mandarine’s owner’s blog (Mandarine is a beautiful kitty). Most of the discussion centered around the question of what types of blog posts garner the greatest number of comments. Here are a couple of the commenters comments about commenting:
Lorelle wrote, “The reasons people might comment on this is not the length. In fact, length isn’t always a consideration in the decision to comment or not.”- Maria added, “Many times after reading your posts I have something to say, but I usually feel intimidated to comment.”
- Charlotte commented, “Sometimes I don’t have the energy to frame a good quality comment so I remain silent. I could sign in and say ‘thanks for the post; am still digesting it’, but I feel your posts deserve more than that.”
So now I’m wondering what YOU have to say. What type of post is most likely to get your comments?
P.S. I added a picture of my kitties because cat photos seem to attract all kinds of great attention. 
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A post is most likely to get my comments if:
- I know the blog and the author (not the case here, but I can make exceptions); in any case, never before I have had a look at the ‘about’ page
- and I feel I have something I want to say — thought-provoking posts are great, but long complex posts (such as mine) make it more difficult because spontaneity becomes tricky (I have to read the post at least a second time to make sure I get it right)
- and I feel what I say will be useful to someone
- and it reflects favorably of me
- and there are not too many comments already: I hate to have to read 50 comments just to make sure I am not saying something that’s already been said without my knowing it
- and the captcha obstacle course does not flush my comment down the spam drain
- and there is a reasonable probability that my comment will be ackowledged (comment moderation is not a bad thing, as it is a proof the blog author at least read my comment)
- and that’s about it
Comment by mandarine — April 10, 2007 @ 11:47 am
Merci beaucoup pour votre mots Mandarine. I really like what you said about reading the “about page” prior to commenting. I’ve usually done this or have visited the blog multiple times prior to commenting.
By the way, I thought your “bubble broccoli” for your sitemap was both beautiful and useful. Thanks for sharing your creativity in this way.
Hope you’ll visit here or at my other blogs in the future. Peace.
Comment by Shonnie — April 10, 2007 @ 12:03 pm
I agree with mandarine. The true issue in eliciting comments is giving people something to comment about. Not every post deserves a comment, but when you create an atmosphere that just makes people want to comment, they will.
Captchas, torture tests, logging in, all these things get in the way of comments and are totally unnecessary.
Comment by Lorelle — April 11, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
Thanks for adding into the conversation Lorelle. I may disable the anti-spam image plugin for awhile and see if spam rate changes. I’m okay with these features myself, yet I do want to make commenting as easy as possible. Peace.
Comment by Shonnie — April 12, 2007 @ 1:20 pm