Please Don’t Give Readers Guilt Trips
A Fictional Letter
Dear Reader,
I spend about twenty hours a week writing content for this blog. I strive for a post a day, but don’t always make it. My blood, sweat, and tears are poured into every post I write.
I take the time to gather information, and summarize it for your edification. I try to write my posts for your benefit.
But what do I get in return? You are not donating money to me via Paypal. You are not leaving comments. You aren’t even clicking on my ads.
I am fed up. You as a reader need to leave comments. Your clicks on my ads help pay for my site and give me motivation to keep writing. Donations are necessary to keep this site afloat as well.
If you don’t start clicking on my ads or leaving comments, I will be forced to close up shop and deprive you of all the wonderful content I am generating.
Sincerely,
Please Avoid Giving Your Readers Guilt Trips
Let’s face the cold-hard truth: readers come to a site for content. If the reader happens to click on an ad, subscribe to a feed, or leave a comment, this should be considered “above and beyond” behavior for the reader.
Readers are not obligated to leave that comment. Readers are not obligated to keep a blogger in business. Readers are there to read and maybe interact. Can you live with that?
inspirationbit says...
No, I can’t. I won’t be manipulating anyone into commenting on my blog, but I have to admit that the interaction on my blog is what keeps me to continue blogging.
Let me know if you’re tired of my teaching examples, but I have to give this one as well. If I didn’t get any feedback or questions from my students during the class, I didn’t know whether or not my lecture makes sense to them and if it’s going in a right direction. Of course, it’s a bit easier in the offline world, because I could see their eyes and the facial expression, and I could get an idea of whether or not they’re getting it, but still I was always asking them questions and encouraging the participation to help me with improving my teaching methods and giving clear explanations.
Same goes with blogging - I need my readers feedback to help me grow my blog and deliver useful and helpful content. I guess it’s a bit different with a personal blogging, but my blog needs readers and their input. Plus, I like interacting with others.
Ronald Huereca says...
inspirationbit,
You make an effort on your blog to encourage interaction and I can see that with the community that has been built up around it. Interaction doesn’t just happen however. You have made a significant effort to get those readers to comment through relationship building and interaction with your readers.
Now if you had just sat back and thought that churning out posts is good enough, would you have the same level of interaction on your blog as you do now?
The point of this post was not to say, “If you readers don’t comment, deal with it.” The point was to point out that readers are not “required” to comment and that a blogger should be thankful for the community they do have.
Simonne says...
I can endorse what you just said, Ronald. I blogged for more than 6 months without having any comments on my blog, because I just wrote, optimized, promoted and waited to see the page in Google SERPs after several days. If you don’t put some efforts in, people are less likely to comment. Imagine that I did not even know that my blog’s readers had to be registered and logged in to place a comment! So if you want comments from readers, you must definitely care about that and do something.
inspirationbit says...
of course, I’m thankful for the community I have on my blog and for each and every comment, and grateful to every commenter.
My previous comment was to your question “Can I live with that?”, which in my opinion included the question “Can I live with having no comments on my blog?” and my answer to that part of the questions was - No, I can’t.
Bes says...
Very interesting idea. I do not like guilt trips in most of the offline things also. Vivien has a point that a teacher sometimes need input from students. However, Ronald, you also have a point that no one is “required” to comment, since turning things into obligations slowly destroy the concept of doing things when you want to. Also, Vivien-inspirationbit, you bring up an interesting point: some blogs depend on comments and some depend on other things. Many blogs thrive because of comments, while some do not, like Seth Godin’s blog.
Simonne, thanks for sharing that detail! Wow, you are right: that is indeed really scary that the blog readers had to be registered and logged in to comment and you did not know about it [registering can be fine, but not realizing something because of the blog taking up too much time on other aspects is realistic and scary]. You are right; if you are aiming for comments, you must definitely take care of the commentors and the concept of commenting.
I personally put a lot of focus on replying to people, and at the same time, I try not to put any, or much focus, on the concept of commenting. Why? Because I want to write things without being influenced by prospective commentors and their comments. Seth Godin is right on many levels; focusing too much on comments can result in one writing solely to get an increasing number of comments. I am guessing this can sometimes fall along the same lines as writing solely to earn money, though in both cases, if people can balance both true writing with the desire to get money or comments, like many newspaper writers or bloggers who focus on quality content a lot, things should balance out and move in the right direction, where everyone realizes that the focus on good quality is automatically bringing in something a person desires.