(Note: I originally did this post in 2014. I never published, but I need a post for today and this still seems relevant… so here it is!)
I need to get on my blogger soapbox.
For those who don’t blog, the community is pretty solid. I’m happy to say I’ve found several people I consider friends through the crazy world of blogging. It’s a community of interaction. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes not so much.
But a key to a successful blog — depending on how you define success — is having people read and, hopefully, comment on your posts.
We all look at success in a different way. To me, it’s nice to know I have a group of people I enjoy reading and they, in turn, hopefully enjoy reading what I write. I comment on a bunch of blogs during the week and it’s always nice to see comments here. Sometimes I’ll go stretches where I just don’t get to other blogs and then when I do, I can catch up like I never missed a beat.
With that in mind, I can’t lie — sometimes it’s tough.
You see, when I go to a blog and I want to comment, I don’t want it to be hard. On my site, you fill out the form and comment. If it’s the first time you’ve commented, I have to approve it. That protects against spam. If it’s after that, it posts.
Just like that.
Recently, I’ve come to the point where I don’t want to comment on blogs as much. Why? Because people are making it so difficult. And it’s not even always the fault of the blogger — sometimes it’s the commenting system.
Case in point — Blogger, which is owned by Google.
This is a platform a lot of people use. It’s easy to use and navigate and offers a lot. Alas, the way it’s set up, it doesn’t allow things to always be easy.
In other words, you can’t just leave your name. You have to use one of the items set up. Now, this can be changed, but it often isn’t.
See, my blog is a self-hosted WordPress blog. I don’t want to comment with any profile other than my name/URL. Why? Because my profiles don’t link back to my blog. The idea of commenting, besides giving thoughts and such on the post, is that maybe some others will like your comment, click on the link and check out your blog.
One big happy community, you see.
But some of these systems make it so you have to be registered with them or comment without somebody knowing that you, I don’t know, actually have a blog. How does the owner even know, if it’s not set up to your account with that platform?
They don’t.
I guess all I’m saying is to those who blog, make sure you give people different options when commenting. You might get a few more comments that way (you might not, either, but it doesn’t hurt, right?) and you make it easy for people to comment.
Options are good. Especially when it comes to blogging!
OK, off the soap box. Thanks for reading!
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