Ronald recently wrote a post talking about different ways to losing readers. I would like to continue that post in its same format, almost, as a series and present to you part 2 of how to lose readers.

The points listed below are not universal laws, but only trends and ways to create your own universal laws that can apply to any or many situations. The same way each and every of Ronald’s point had exceptions or could be an exception instead of a universal law, each and every point below may or may not apply to you or every situation you can think of, depending on what you think is right or wrong. The points listed below are basic mentality trends that can lead to very dramatic results of both positive and negative nature, depending on how well they are handled.

Ok, so let us start losing some readers in the long run, shall we? Remember, each and every point below has exceptions, or is an exception to a general trend.

Making promises and not fulfilling them

Telling users that you will do something, and then not doing them on purpose can be a very bad thing. I have had many online bloggers ask me for advice and then tell me that they would contact me to let me know about something. Many of those online bloggers never do, since they only wanted to ask for advice in the first place.

It is not a bad thing to not promise something to the reader. Promise only when you can deliver, and if you cannot, let the reader know that you could not.

Discrediting the existence of problems that readers bring up

Imagine letting a bloggers or a site owner or worker know that you are experiencing some difficulty, and in return the site owner says that they do not see anything wrong with their site. It is one of the biggest annoying factors to be told by someone else that they do not see the problem you are facing, since that means that either the other person does not care, or that the other person must be forced into a parallel world where they can experience the exact same thing that you are experiencing.

I do not see it from my site, and from here, it works perfectly.

How many times have you received that answer? I have gotten that answer many times, usually from personal blogs or really popular blogs. The reason why personal blogs and really popular blogs have the tendency to think like that requires a detailed article of its own.

Focus only on new or supportive comments and commentors

I think the concept of agreeing and disagreeing comments should be done away with, and every comment be treated equally. I try to unsubscribe from all blogs that love supportive comments and hate critical or nonsupporting comments.

Megan, thanks for the supportive comment, I really appreciate it. Chandler, the disagreeing points you have mentioned have been duly noted. Thank you.

For me, the above comment is a slap to Chandler, as it makes me think that the author of the above comment is a weak person who wants everyone to agree to them without them working towards that objective.

Replying without courtesy

I have to explain this one in a bit detail. Imagine you calling someone or sending a snail mail to a company employee asking a question or giving some feedback. Now imaging driving to that company employee’s workplace and waiting downstairs by your car: the company employee comes down, looks at you, walks over and before you have time to shake his hand or say anything, he/she says:

The product handle does need some improvement and the product packaging seems perfect to us already

Imagine the employee then walks off, without waiting for your reply or anything, to a nearby restaurant. Regardless of the busy schedule of that employee, squeezing in a hand shake, a “hello” or a “Sorry have to go, really busy, will try to contact you again or you can call me” takes no more than a few seconds.

Now compare the same exact thing to comment or e-mail responses you get from bloggers. Many bloggers respond as if you have disturbed their 400 years of beauty sleep, and that they are very angry about it. The responses are cold hearted, and show no emotion. You are just a single reader: if you do not find the responses to be polite, the blogger has many other commentors who will stick around to keep the readership base growing.

Responding only to complaints

I usually find it annoying and funny when companies respond to complaints faster than they respond to non-criticizing feedback. Similarly, bloggers who respond to criticizing comments more than non-criticizing comments appear to be people who care only about their reputation.

Sure, respond to people who are complaining, but also respond to those who are not complaining, since both of those groups of people may be equal. If you are taking time to defend yourself against people who attack you, how about also taking the time to open yourself up to people that you think are not attacking you?

Not being considerate of others

This is a point that deserves a book of its own. A lot of people want commentors who agree with them, and a lot of people are not open to other ways of life. For example, many times, religious or political blogs rip apart comments by anyone from a different religion, even if the commentor does not rip apart a post by the other author.

Remember, simply adding “Thank you for your comment. I really appreciate it” to a comment does not make it nice; a comment that insults or disagrees with a commentor simply because of their religious, political, ethnic, cultural, educational, work-related or any other background and not the topic at hand is still a comment that is inconsiderate. It is like saying “Hey, watch out, I don’t mean to do this and I appreciate you experiencing this from me” and then punching someone in the face.

Focus on famous blog owner comments

Take any of your popular blogs and see how many times the popular blogger responds to another popular blogger. People who try to respond to famous blog owner comments immediately are basically telling all non-famous blog owners that they are not worth the effort to be responded to.

Hey Darren, very nice to see you here! Thanks for the response. Yes, I agree, full feed posts are better than partial feeds.

Imagine seeing the above reply from a post author to a post where a dozen other comments have not been addressed.

Disabling or turning off comments without notifying affected parties

When commentors comment, they are spending time on your site. Sure, it is your site and if you are not making any money or getting any kind of a personal benefit from it for yourself or some other entity, you can do anything you please. However, I believe that if you attract people into spending their time on your site, actions like turning off comments which can affect those people should be preceded by notifications or warnings.

Ronald does not like deleting comments. I do not like deleting comments and I also do not like turning off comments. However, these are not universal beliefs, and thus, if we have to do something along the lines of deleting a comment or turning off comments on a post, we would probably love to give some warning, notification or justification and some alternative that people who have spent time commenting on a post can look up to.

Conclusion: It has become easier to lose some commentors than to gain some

All of the above points have resulted in me unsubscribing from dozens of blogs, whether they belong to people I know or to people I have heard of. As you may have noticed, the points listed above are more like different mentality trends that result in many actions, while the points Ronald listed were more like direct actions that result in many different mentality trends.

I hope both of these types of points that lead to lost readers will help both you and everyone else, including myself, into learning what works and what does not, and what we consider important and what we consider to be something that can be ignored.

Please let me know what you think. I would really appreciate it. Thank you for reading.

Disclosure (readers do care about these): This post is not part of any group writing project.

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