When it comes down to a blog often the measure of success is seen as being the comment rate. While comments are part of the process and arguable to be essential maybe and definetly nice, how much are they an actual indication of the blogs success?
Yes, I do love receiving comments as any other blogger does. It gives a debate and perspective you rarely get in other websites (not including communities of course). A blog is primarily about one voice (or a group of voices), but having comments allows this voice to be balanced, supported and even argued with. I think this is a great role in blogging. But, can you really measure the success of a blog through the comments?
I personally, don’t think you can. One of the main reasons for this conclusion is the number of blogs I read and subscribe rss to; yet I do not post comments on the majority of them frequently. I have commented on most of them at one time or the other, but I do not see it as a constant activity. I have found once of twice I have rather than commented on the blog, I have commented through my blog.
While I agree at their importance it is not an indication of how good a blog is as to if there are 30 comments on every post. I can think of many popular blogs that have few comments or at least sporadic ones. This doesn’t make them less successful or valid – it is just that commenting is an unpredictable part time activity. I know there are some loyal members who religiously comment on their favourite blogs. These are arguably worth their weight in gold and create a great community around the blog.
I hear a lot about people crying about the lack of comments on their blog. I always think they are slightly missing the point in their complaining. As a blog gets more successful the people commenting will naturally increase due to exposure. This is part of any blog’s evolution as it becomes known about. I would argue though this isn’t the measure of the blog’s success. For one thing, you can see in hit rates the amount of people you have accessing you blog – only a very small percentage of this will be comments. Couple with this the fact that a blog will prove to fail fairly quickly if it is all about the commenting and nothing about the contents. The mark of a blog is far more complex than how many comments you have or don’t have.
I can see a few people possibly shouting out "you are only saying this because you don’t have many comments". That to me sounds like an accusation of hard cheese moaning. The fact is I see comments as a bonus not an indicator of success. Every blogger measures their blog success in a variety of ways. For some it is the hit rate, the exposure and maybe even just posting regularly. Don’t get me wrong, I love comments as I have said. I also treat them with respect and bookmark every person’s blog that comments. I see it as a great way to take a small percentage snapshot of viewers and look at what they are like. The thing is I recognise it is a small minor percentage – I can see this from say my hit rate. I do not take the fact that a post has had no comments as a negative and if I get a run assume I am failing with this blog.
Really what I am saying is that the measure of a blog can’t be measured by comments alone. By it’s nature a blog is a multi-layered thing. We all do it for different reasons and the blogs are successful for different reasons. Commenting can give you a voice to sound back to – it can also give you an indication of the audience. What you can’t forget is that commenting is not a majority pastime when you think about it. That snapshot is only of those who probably are frequent commenters on many blogs.
We all love comments but really we shouldn’t think we have failed if we don’t get any. I would indicate that other signs of failure are far more dependable. You can make the same argument about hit rates – it is more or less only the ones that get past the front page that you can count as readers. Either this or if you get none look at why they don’t get past a point. All of the various statistics about a blog are useful in directing and tweaking what you are doing. The success of a blog isn’t just about having one thing or another. That being said every comment on this blog releases coffee beans into the wild where they can be free and happy. So what are you waiting for just comment……
Commenting about commenting – how postmodern…A blog with no comments may be seen as less credible than a blog with many comments. But is it any less successful? No way. It depends on how you define a successful blog. Plus, if people stopped blogging because they never received comments, they would be doing it for the wrong reasons. Writing because you have something important to say, good. Writing to receive comments or selling out your thoughts so strangers leave comments, bad.
Let’s get even more postmodern with a comment about comments about commenting (erm). Credible is such a flexible application though, I am not sure you can assume that creditibility along with success can be measured by comments. It all seems to come down to if you like it and it works for you keep on regardless of comments. Writing should be about any reason from important things to say to many others. Anyone else getting the nike phrase just do it ringing in their ears?
I remember months and months ago when I was disappointed about the lack of comments at my blog… but I didn’t complain, I just kept working hard. It turns out that I just wasn’t inspiring enough discussion with my writing. Now I write some articles that bring 20 or so comments, all from people who read my site regularly or find my links on other blogs. I even know which articles will garner more discussion, and it’s all about striking up a little controversy :)
I think Montoya is clearly right. It’s controversy that stimulates comment, otherwise people just think ‘yep’ and move on. That’s probably why so many comments are seen as arguementative. The main body of people just agree and move on