I Was Invited to the Conversation, and I Did My Part…
11. Apr, 2008 
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I was invited to the conversation, and I did my part. Did you do yours?
What I ask is a somewhat rhetorical question. Having the opportunity to transcribe Liz Strauss’s presentation, I came across some valuable gems of advice.
One of her points about why readers don’t leave comments was because readers notice when the author doesn’t respond.
Which begs the question: why would an author with no intention of responding to comments invite readers to be apart of the conversation?
Below is a quote from Liz Strauss’s presentation describing exactly that scenario:
A really good friend of mine who writes a great business blog was on a blog of a very famous author who asked a question. And she found the question so compelling, she went over to another blog and got a friend of hers to come back to this first blog and answer it. And the author did not answer the comment.
And so my friend went back over six months of the original best-selling author’s blog and found that at the end of every blog post, he asked a question.
But he had never answered a comment. And she ended up writing a blog post about it saying, “I don’t feel like I’ve been invited to be a part of the conversation and I don’t think I’m going back there.”
Readers pay attention to those kinds of things. If you rarely respond, then I don’t feel welcome.
My lone comment…
This week I commented on a post over at BlogHerald. The post was written by Chris Garrett, who usually does a great job at responding to readers.
He asked, who else upgraded to WordPress 2.5?
Several readers responded, including me. But where was the author? We (the readers) were invited in. But there was no conversation, which was unfortunate.
Why ask me to show up then?
It’s hard to respond to comments. It’s “labor intensive” as Liz Strauss would put it.
However, blog authors have no excuse to not respond to comments when they actively encourage readers to be apart of the conversation.
A conversation isn’t one-way. When somebody asks me to chime in, I don’t expect to talk to a digital wall. I never “expect” comments. I’m thankful for each one.
I’ll close with another quote from Liz Strauss about her efforts to respond to readers:
If a blog is a conversation, you need to respond. I respond to every comment on my blog. And believe me, it is labor intensive. Of those sixty-thousand comments, at least 25,000 of them are mine. That was a lot of hours.
Liz mentions that in order to have a conversation, a blogger needs to respond to his or her readers.
Here’s another rhetorical question: if the author doesn’t show up, then why should the reader?
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I’ll be the first to admit that I need to do a better job at responding to readers. I wrote a post over at WeblogToolsCollection that received sixty-five comments (a lot for me). I did my best to keep up, but it’s overwhelming, and somewhat impossible to respond to everyone.
Any thoughts on how to respond to comments when you get a truckload?
I don’t think you have to respond to every single one, so long as you remain part of the conversation.
In fact, I think responding to every single on in some instances breaks up the conversation. In the same way that pingbacks interrupt the conversational flow, having the post author interrupt a good discussion by thanking each individual for their input can kill things.
e.g. to take Chris Garrett’s post: I don’t think he needed to respond to each single one of us who said “yeah, I upgraded the second Matt said I could”. A blanket “it seems our readers are really on the ball” or similar comment would have covered that. But your comment (about themes not breaking) *did* need an individual response, and that would have moved the conversation onwards.
e.g. #2 on your upgrading post: I don’t think you would need to say “well that’s good news” to everyone who said it went without a hitch. Picking up on specific problems, or recommendations is good: asking if people blogged about their issues is good. Both of those, you already did.
@Sue,
Thank you for your insight as always.
Yes, too many “I agrees” and “thanks” would definitely kill it. I suppose in those instances, the author should interact when directly engaged or when a reader asks a question or is confused by something.
I suppose my technique is to thank everyone for their feedback, and then address those who have requested feedback from me directly or indirectly.
Here’s a follow-up question if you’re in the mood
.. if you know an author won’t respond, would you still leave a comment? And if so, why?
If I were to answer it, I would say: it depends on the blog’s environment. If the blog is built up around the community and I think my comment would help them out, I would leave a comment, regardless of the interaction with the author. I would also leave a comment to demonstrate expertise.
If a blog is built upon an author and his or her work, and the author is a no-show, I suppose then I wouldn’t care to leave a comment.
I agree with Sue – Although I get very few comments on my blog (it’s still very new) and I respond to each one, I agree that as long as the original author is taking part in the stream of conversation, that shows participation and caring, particularly if he/she does respond to specific [parts of] comments and commenters. I often check back on a blog I’ve commented on just to see if the author has noticed, or remarked on my comments.
A lot of smaller blogs “get” this, but quite a few – notably larger blogs – don’t. And I rarely return to those. I think the only blogs that can get away with no author interaction are the bigger media blogs, where the conversation is kept entirely alive by commenters. But to be honest I only rarely comment on those (only if I feel very strongly about the topic or believe I really have something worth contributing to the conversation), primarily because I rarely feel the need to give feedback to anyone other than a post author.
@Trisha,
You bring up an interesting point, something I’ve thought about in a previous post. The thought being, are there only certain type of blogs where author/reader interaction is ideal…
I’d hope that all blogs/sites were capable of a conversational atmosphere, but perhaps not. I’ll have to think on this some more.
As an author, I would chime in after giving the post a burn in period of a day or so. That way, the post has a chance to get a couple of comments on the blog and perhaps some commentors would comment on each others comments, CONFUSED yet?
At any rate, if you are dealing with a truckload of comments then I would chime in when there was some sort of confusion or clarification that needed to take place. It’s also important that an author doesn’t end the conversation by replying to a post. Sometimes the conversation can end after the blog author leaves his or her message because presumably, the blog author gets the last say, which it doesn’t have to be that way. Man, I wonder if any of that made sense.
@Jeff,
Yes. Conversation terminated! Oh, I can see the Terminator quotes coming on.
as usual, you raise up a great question, Ronald. I often wonder why so many people comment on high profiled blogs knowing that their comments will get no reply from the blogs’ authors, especially when they’re encouraged to provide their input. I would feel used if after providing a lengthy reply that bears some value my comment would remain unanswered, that’s why I almost never leave comments on high profile blogs.
Now, if I were to get hundreds of daily comments on my blog, I too would most probably not have much time left for responding to each comment as I do now, but I would definitely at least thank everyone for input and comment to some of them, especially the ones with questions, interesting opinions and valuable input.
I know several blogs that get several dozens of comments and the authors do an amazing job by replying to most of them. I feel genuinely welcomed on such blogs. That proves that even high profiled bloggers who receive lots of comments don’t have any excuse in not replying to them. After all, most of them are full-time bloggers, so if blogging is their job and they can find time for regular posting, they can and should find time for interacting and responding to their readers, at least to some.
As for breaking the conversation, I find waiting some time for readers to leave their comments/thoughts and then writing a bulk reply in one comment and covering all or some of those comments works really well – it still allows for the conversation to flow in addition to the two-way response.
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It’s very reassuring to see high-profile bloggers responding and showing readers some respect and appreciation. I suppose it’s the same as remembering one’s roots.
I think I’m with you on responding to a lot of comments. I try to write in bulk (depending on the post) after some time has passed. I then only respond to the readers that have called on me directly, or ones that need assistance, as Jeff pointed out.