I recently went to a blog that I hadn’t been to in a long time. Not because they’re less relevant. I’ve just been busy. At first the site appeared as it always has. Good content with ads running amok down the right hand side of the screen. It took a minute but I finally realized that there were no comments on their posts. I remember there consistently being 10-15 comments per post and not just the: “Hey! You’re really smart and thanks for the post.”!
Zero comments.
I’ve been blogging for 4+ years and when I started the goal was to get as many comments on your posts as you could. The general rule of thumb has been not to enable commenting until you get more than 750 unique visits a day. (So much for the thumbs). I then went to the Compete.com profile and traffic has grown. As my daughter would say: “It’s a mystery!”
I then logged into my social media monitoring tool and took a look at the level of mentions and sentiment and it has increased. MYSTERY SOLVED!!
The comment has changed to a mention and if there is an actual comment, it’s now attached to a RT or a Like. I imagine there is a change in value of the comment but it’s now being shared for sure so the value is higher right there. (Less comments but more are exposed because of social sharing.) Blogs are turning into conduits as opposed to self-contained online structures. VERY COOL!!
