The good and bad of blog comments
Many new bloggers are not entirely new to blogging – they’ve read a lot of blogs, and maybe noticed that sometimes, commenters get nasty, negative, or disagreeable. It’s important to remember: being able to become part of the conversation is what sets blogs apart from, among other things, printed newspapers and static websites.
While I make an exception here for journal blogs (where the author is blogging for their own personal satisfaction and not for the purpose of audience-building), I find that a niche blog is almost useless unless it offers readers the ability to comment, even negatively, on what the author’s presenting.
Why? Your goal with a niche blog should not just be to become the recognized expert on a given topic. It should also be to become a true resource to your readers – and that means offering them opinions other than your own.
Indeed, readers expect the opportunity to leave comments and be part of the conversation when they visit a blog (even, to a degree, journal blogs). Make it as easy as possible for people to comment, and you will help create a thriving community around your blog with high return readership.
You can always set up your blog to moderate comments if you are afraid of unchecked negativity. (Here’s one example of someone who attempted to deal with an overwhelming number of negative comments. And, here’s another example of a blog that I know personally was inundated from day one with negative comments, yet the blogger perseveres with a helpful, professional attitude to this day.) You can also look for plug-ins to fight “comment spam” on your blog.
Where do you get ideas for blog posts?
Every blogger I know has hit the occasional dry patch when searching for ideas to write about. What we all have in common is that we feel blogging’s important enough to bust through the writer’s block and work to generate ideas for posts. Here are some of the ways I generate ideas for my blogs:
1. I read other blogs and react to their most compelling posts. I use this tactic a lot, in fact, because reading someone else’s blog almost always makes me think about my own take on the topic at hand.
2. I subscribe to news releases related to my niche industry and use them as the basis for posts. If you don’t have a niche blog, you can still do more general searches that may turn up some ideas. PRnewswire as a great source for news releases; one of my searches is simply the generic “women’s interests.”
3. I look at past posts and brainstorm ideas that might branch off of them. This can be especially effective with older posts, where new developments may have occurred that justify an update.
4. I subscribe to “alerts” from Google on various keywords relevant to my niche. These alerts are delivered to my email in-box so I don’t have to go looking for them. This not only leads me to other bloggers’ posts, it also gives me a notion of whether a particular topic is “hot” that day.
5. I react to conversations I’ve overheard in real life. Being a blogger doesn’t mean disengaging from real interactions, especially if you want to stay current in your niche. Mine the conversations you have, or that you overhear, for relevant blog posts.
6. I draw on my own personal experiences and challenges. Sometimes all it takes is a moment of personal reflection to ask myself, “What am I struggling with this week that might interest my readers?”
7. I read the daily news and comment on the most controversial or interesting items related to my niche. Or, in the case of my journal blog, on whatever interests me the most.
Have you hit the Blogger’s Wall yet? What was the strategy you used to bust through it?
Blog posting frequency
Q. When starting a new blog, is it better to roll out content slowly or to load it up quickly with lots of posts for readers to discover?
A. The focus of any new blog (or any established blog, for that matter) should be on the quality of the content rather than the number of posts. Yes, you want readers to have plenty to look at when they arrive. But think of it this way: when you come upon a new blog, which would you rather have: 10 informative, well-written posts or 30 thrown-together half-baked thoughts?
For a new blog, my recommendations are:
Two well-crafted posts per week. These are posts that have one or more of these components:
1. A primary point, supported by examples
2. Clean, clear, tightly-edited prose
3. One or two quality links out to other blogs, relevant to the point or topic of the post
4. Photo or other illustration
5. Overall tone of being informative, helpful, or thought-provoking (or all three)
Two ‘quickie-posts’ per week. A quickie post is something “short and sweet” that you add to the blog not because you’re in a hurry, but because it meets your blog’s mission and is interesting or especially timely, but doesn’t require a fully crafted post to be useful to your readers. Examples might include:
1. A video or photo
2. A thought-provoking question or “stray thought” you want to throw out there (try creating a poll or short survey)
3. A great quote or snippet from another blog post (be sure to give proper credit)
4. A link to a post on another blog you found especially compelling
This formula, 2+2, creates the sense that your blog is regularly updated but shouldn’t stretch your ability to maintain it.
Blog tools: search your own blogroll with Rollyo
by Janet on February 4, 2008
in Online Tools
I try to link back to the blog posts of other Des Moines area bloggers as often as I can. One of the ways I decide whom to link to from a particular post is this: I determine a topic I want to write about, then I do a Google search to see who else is talking about that topic. Problem is, of course, Google gives me links to bloggers from around the world – and I want to specifically link to local bloggers as often as I can. So, what I needed was a tool that could do a Google-style search only on Des Moines area blogs.
It didn’t take long before I found what seems to be a tool for doing just that: it’s called Rollyo, and it allows me to create my own custom search list by entering the URL’s of up to 25 selected blogs. So, I spent a little time creating a few of my own “searchrolls,” and now I can search for occurances of my selected phrase just within the blogs I’ve specified. This tells me if anyone else locally is blogging about the topic I’m covering, and helps me quickly uncover a post I might be able to link back to.
Only two faults I’ve found so far: first, the limit of 25 URL’s. I ought to be able to enter as many URL’s as I want to in a single searchroll. And second, I can only search one of my custom searchrolls at a time. It took me four separate rolls (25 URL’s in each) to enter all my local site links, so I have to do four separate searches. That’s still better than searching the entire Internet for a link to a local blog, but I’d like to be able to check multiple searchrolls with one click.
