Just love that Francis Urquhart line and the way the astonishingly brilliant Ian Richardson delivered it. And I’m shamelessly shoe-horning it in here as it obliquely relates to Cam23 Thing 4 which is about comments (on blogs).
What have I got to say about blog comments? Well for one thing, I don’t think I’m the sort of blogger who asks lots of questions, which is perhaps why I don’t receive a tremendous amount of comments. My approach is more ‘this is what I’ve learned’, or ‘this is what I feel’ but maybe it should be more – I think this, how about you?
Having said that I don’t lie awake at night worried that my blog posts don’t elicit heaps of comments because that’s not why I’m blogging – I primarily blog to process and record my thoughts and to share my take. Now if my blog wasn’t getting any hits, I might feel different. When the whole EBSCO Harvard Business Review debate raged last year I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a bit of a kick out of the fact that 635 people viewed my post on the subject. It’s worth nothing that the post has only received 2 comments in total, so in my opinion comments are definitely not the ‘be all and end all’ and a lack of them should certainly not put you off blogging.
Any comments anyone? Anyone? Hello? Sod yer then.
Constructivist 
Agree – blogging is primarily for continuing personal/professional development. And comments are only a small part of that.
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Because it takes time to comment, I don’t tend to comemnt on posts unless I think there’s some value I can add, some extra information or different angle that the blogger hasn’t mentioned or thought about. So there’s not really much to say about a post, like your EBSCO example) that most users will agree with. It may be encouraging for the blogger to have ‘that was an interesting post’, but in terms of information content, it’s not much of an addition to the conversation.
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Wow this is UBER ironic because I nearly commented ‘w00t’ on your previous blog post to this one, as I found it quite sort of upbeat and inspiring. But I didn’t in the end, cos I thought you’d think I was being a tit..
I actually disagree with you on this one – or rather, I have a different perspective. I like the interactive part of blogging very much, I like the community aspect of it. Because blogging can be quite a narcissitc activity so it’s good to get respones back – I feel quite bereft if no one comments… Even if it has lots of views. Sometimes it’s because, as you mention above, the post doesn’t really invite them. But sometimes it just feels like I’ve failed to connect, or just that I’m interested in someting which everyone else finds uninteresting.
As a general rule, I have to reign in the part of me which could potentially take this whole enterprise too seriously. 🙂
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Never a tit. You are one of my very favourite bloggers (and commenters) so stick that in your pipe.
I love the interactivity of blogging too, but maybe I just don’t mind as much when comments don’t come in thick and fast. One thing that prompted me to write this was that I have heard several bloggers recently (and unhappily) evaluating their blog solely on the basis of the number of comments they have received. If I did that then I’d be a much less happy blunny (that’s a blogging rabbit btw).
I’m always having to reign myself in for multitudinous reasons.
I just KNEW this particular post would get lots of comments.
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Stop it Mr Priestner, you’re making me blush!
I actually have a ‘most interactive posts’ chart on my blog homepage, to encourage people to go back and read the ones which have caused the most comment. The plug-in actually allows you to choose between displaying a top 5 of the most views or the most commments, so I’ve gone with the latter. (Although no one has ever read any of my posts 635 times!)
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I noticed your most interactive posts chart when I was visiting your site to re-read your twitter post. I’d probably do the same if I received as many comments. The 635 views was (clearly) a one-off.
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I have my own one-off too – my future of libraries video was linked to by a Chinese website which brought floods of views every day. I don’t really trust the stats though – Feedburner stats and Feed stats give different figures for views, subscribers, everything.
I like to fondly imagine the correct figures are everything added together. 🙂
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is there a way in blogger to see how many people have viewed a post? I couldn’t seem to see or find a gadget – I know you are on wordpress but as one of “our leaders” I thought you might know.
I think as we have all started out on the cam23 blogs you do wonder why you are bloggin if no-one is reading it. Then I decided, as others have said, that it is a useful outpouring and thought collecting task to do in itself. Cheaper than a therapist and better than ranting in the office!
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Blogger did introduce a stats tab recently but promptly removed it again due to problems. Most people on blogger who want to track their stats use Google Analytics. I’ve not used this myself.
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The trouble with blogging is it starts simple but draws you in – for that reason I’ll be reccomending not using Blogger, and just starting off with WordPress from the get-go, when I do my workshop on it next month. Blogger seems too simplistic, and I think the ‘learning curve’ difference is actually pretty minimal.
For info, I used Feed Statistics on WP for tracking number of views. (http://www.chrisfinke.com/wordpress/plugins/feed-statistics/)
No one reads anyone’s blog straight away – in fact, being part of a 23 things programme is a great leg-up in that way. There’s no subtitute for just churning out useful blog posters, and eventually They Will Come and you’ll find yourself with a bunch of subscribers. I know some uber-library-bloggers have thousands of followers but I think that distorts expectations somewhat; I’m happy with three-figures.
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