Jogging and Blogging

Hi Kaya,

Great question. I assume you know the 90-9-1 rule. Of your visitors, 90% will read the post, 9% will leave a comment now and then, and 1% will be loyal readers and commenters. Sounds pretty discouraging, huh. You just need to know that way more people are reading your blog than commenting.

That said, if you are like me, you crave responses and interactions. One thing I have found is that if I comment on other people's blogs, they tend to visit mine and leave a comment. Of course, if you keep commenting and never get that blogger to visit your blog, you might not be so eager to keep returning.

I have stopped measuring the success of my blog by how many comments I get. (It was a slow, painful process to reach that point!) I can see by my stats that I am getting readers and so I figure if people are reading what I write, that's worth something.

Hope this helps.

Yeah, I've had that happen, too. I think that as bloggers, we are writing so much that we don't think that it might not come as easily to others.

What do I say? What if my comment sounds lame and it's out there for the world to see? How do I say something in a unique way so I don't end up being a me-too commenter?

We talk about comments—getting and giving—in our Savvy Blogging workshop. It's an interesting topic.

Kaya,

The more commenting you can do on other blogs, blogs that share the same audience as yours, the better. I regularly comment on (and receive e-nail delivery of) about ten blogs. I got my first guest blogging assignment on a fairly large marketing blog (through Twitter, actually) and that really made our blog traffic spike.

I also visit alltop.com frequently. It's a site with the top blogs in every industry you could imagine. It gives me ideas for new blog posts, helps me keep up with the thought leaders in my field, and helps me find new blogs to visit and leave comments on.

Are you talking about a blog roll? On our blog, we call it "Blogs We Read." What you have to be careful with is: 1) is it a blog with content your readers would be interested in? and 2) is it someone you know enough about that you can absolutely say that you recommend them? (Because of course whoever you send your readers to is a direct reflection on you.)

Does this make sense? (Hope I didn't confuse you!)

Kaya and Judy,

I really enjoyed reading this discussion progression about blogs. For some time now, I have been mystified by the correlation of traffic vs the visitors action. While great at SEO'ing traffic to various sites, I am always frustrated by the lack of "action" by the readers.

The 90/9/1 idea makes sense and it does shoe up very closely in my reporting.

It makes sense to comment on similar subject blogs to gain exposure from people who are interested in that topic.

Marc,

Thanks. I find all topics related to blogging fascinating. Sometimes building your blog readership can be painfully slow, but I think it's worth it in the end. I'd rather have fewer readers that I develop relationships with than hundreds (or thousands) of occasional visitors.