I came across a posted titled “Big time bloggers to their readers - You Suck!.” It is a post by Stuart on Pimp My Page Rank focusing on how the “Big time” bloggers mainly focus on getting information out there in order to get comments, and that they do not focus on responding to the comments they get.

While this is an interesting and an extremely important concept in my view, to see how people interact with those that help make them money directly or indirectly, there were a few things in Stuart’s post that I think could be developed further to have an art of analyzing the effectiveness and purpose of comment responses. The concept is excellent, and something I have been talking about for a while also. I think the following 4 measurement should also be included or considered when seeing the interaction rate of a blogger in their own blog’s comment area:

4 things to measure the comment responses

1. Type of a blog

   The type of a blog is extremely critical in judging the quality of a blogger’s willingness to interact with readers and commentors. A commercial blog will be inclined to feel obligated to comment more than feeling passionate about commenting. A personal blog will be inclined to disagree more thoroughly and maybe more aggressively than feeling more considerate of others.

   These other reasons for blogging, like making money or simply expressing ourselves, play an important part in figuring out whether or not, and why, a person is interested in responding to her/his readers and commentors.

2. Quantity vs. Quality

   While the concept of preferring quality over quantity is something that is assumed to be true as a universal fact, not all quality is better than quantity. Online, the art of commenting has changed the quantity aspect of comments, resulting in even a single comment to amount to being more than a single comment, and this is not because of the quality aspect of that comment. For many years I have been responding to many people on different blogs through a single comment to many aggregated comments: I leave a long comment with separate sections dedicated to each commentors that I am addressing. This results in a single comment addressing the different people I need to address, or me addressing different people through a single comment.

   Thus, the measure of the number of comments cannot be valid anymore, not because of comparing quality with quantity but because the very concept of quantity has changed, with one comment serving as many comments. Darren from ProBlogger also pointed this out in his comment to Stuart, and I think it is an extremely important point that can help us realize that the war between quantity and quality is not a universal war that is valid everywhere.

3. History of a blog

   For me, it is extremely important to consider the personal lives of people and corporations, and other entities, when it comes to analyzing behavior like not responding to comments. Has the writer lost interest lately in responding to comments but gained interest in talking more thoroughly and openly? Has a blog run out of time lately to comment immediately, and thus takes some time before returning comments?

   Looking at the history, we can be more accommodating of a person or a corporation’s behavior, whether for the good or for worse, whether to be more accepting or to be stricter.

4. Is the other person also focusing on the vision?

   In addition to finding out whether or not an entity is going through some temporary or permanent change that may be resulting in their focus on commenting to evolve or change, we also have to focus on whether or not the other person is focusing on the same thing as a goal. Imagine taking the concept of evolution and applying it to religion, and then saying that all religions are fake because the concept of evolution proves them wrong. Now imagine the creator of the concept of evolution coming along and telling you that you are stupid, for he or she never intended for his/her theory of evolution to be applied to religion. At that moment, you may realize that you are applying something irrelevant to something different without considering all the related issues.

   Same is the case with commenting. Just because one person does not consider a few comment replies to be enough does not mean that the blogger in question and his readers or commentors also consider a few comment reply to be inadequate. Some people may be focusing on providing more information than commenting. Other people may be focusing on replying through fewer comments to everyone. I usually try to reply in bulk to everyone, addressing everyone separately and individually as I do not like the idea of categorizing people in every situation. I also try to communicate with people outside of commenting, so some times or maybe even many times I will e-mail, call or instant message someone instead of replying to their comment openly. For me, the focus is on communicating, whether openly or away from the public, directly or indirectly, and not on the public display of the number of comment replies I leave on my own site.

Measuring the measurements, everyone

These are some of the many critical things that need to be analyzed or kept in mind when observing and judging the comment responses of others. I may get a “thank you” reply from a money-making blogger daily and instantly to every comment I post on a money-focused blog, but that reply may be less honest and more obligatory than a comment I may get from a personal blogger whose response may be more human. Again, another critical thing to keep in mind is what the person, towards whom the comment response is aimed at, is or should be looking for.

I am glad Stuart talked about this, as it is a step in the direction that this mentality should be headed towards.

Thank you for reading. If possible, please let me know what you think either directly or indirectly through comments, e-mail or some other medium.

If you liked this post, please consider subscribing or Stumbling this post. If not, please let us know how we can better serve you.