Dear readers,
I have been thinking. For both of the two challenges, I participate in, Words for Wednesdays hosted by Elephant's Child, and Poetry Monday hosted by Diane, a paragraph of the how-to is dedicated to the asking, nay, begging for response.
I have something more to ask of you: If you read this and the
poetry of others, would you please leave a comment. Half - if not more - the
fun of these challenges is receiving the responses of others.
But despite this paragraph, and more like it on other blogs, comments are getting rarer all the time. Out of the rarely under 20 and over 40 that read my Words or Poems - yes if you read this, you belong to a small club 😉 - but of these only a handful of faithful readers - THANK YOU! - ever responds.
Yesterday Lissa linked to another blogger, Sandra, who is also wondering. She has also thought of discontinuing her blog, or making it private, things that never crossed my mind, as I love writing too much.
Sandra, like me, blames the missing responses on the superfast Social Media like Facebook or Instagram. I am on both these platforms, but only from the need to follow someone, not because I like them, which I don't! I log on once a day, look at the group news for my group there, and log off again. I post there only once in a blue moon.
I have also seen more and more people leave blogging altogether. Suddenly, blogs are ending in the middle of a sentence (figuratively speaking) and then, following the link in their sidebar, I find them alive and kicking at Instagram.
I am not going to stop blogging. To me blogging is the real McCoy. I like the possibility to write long, even overlong posts. I like to be able to add photos where I like them to be (Blogger allowing). I like to read your comments, questions and so on.
Now I have tried adding a reaction option to the footer of my blog posts.I don't really like it. I think it's too Insta-like. But a thumbs up - or down - is better than no reaction at all.
Let me hear.
- Am I scaring you off with my too long tales from Unicorn Farm or Birch Manor?
- Am I putting you off by not being more (or less) political /feminist/organic/tree-hugging/pro this or con that, whatever your cause may be?
- Do I post too often or too seldom?
- Or is it just a case of the natural ups and downs?
Blogger putter stadig tilfældige kommentarer i spamfængsel. Jeg lover at slippe dem ud hurtigst muligt.
Blogger is still randomly putting comments in spam-jail. I promise to free them as fast as possible.
I have to admit, I'm a bit lazy when it comes to commenting. Sometimes I kind of rush-read and move on. But honestly, I can try harder to leave a word or two.
SvarSletLong posts I am not bother by as I also have long posts. I read them and even sometimes read a lot of them all at once if I have more time.
This is your blog so you can be whatever and however you like. I'm not into politics but I like opinion pieces like this one here. Everyone's different so I don't expect all bloggers to have the same interest or post the same thing, that would be boring. It's the uniqueness of a blogger that I like.
I don't focus much on whether a blogger posts a lot, just as long as they post recent enough so I know they didn't gave up on their blog. Like if you don't post for two or three months, I might assume you are no longer into blogging but I can also be wrong so I still have blogs that haven't updated in months on my reading list.
I think blogging should be a whenever-you-feel-posting kind of habit or hobby or whatever you call it - I know I either posts too many posts at once or not at all. But I do try to post whenever I feel I might be absent way too long which happens sometimes.
I have notice some people using the reaction tool but I don't find that useful because I'm a moody person so some of my responds might change depends on the day I read that post.
I do hope you keep on blogging in your own way and not think too much of what people think - I try to think that way whenever I feel a bit lackluster about blogging. It's very easy to think your readers don't care but I have blogged enough years to know that's not true, readers care but sometimes they, for me anyway, I don't always have the words to say what I want to say.
Sorry for the long rant. Have a lovely day.
Thank you for the long rant ;) I do agree with you - also the reaction tool. I's dubm. I migt just remove it again.
SletThanks for the encouragement!
I hear you. I get a lot of comments on most of my posts for which I am very grateful. However the comments I receive are a tiny fraction of the numbers of people who view the posts. I have no idea why. A reflection of our instant gratification spurred times? People who are not inspired by the subject matter or presentation?
SvarSletI maybe think that the reader-to-comment-ratio stay constant at around one in ten? And I think the ratio was way higher some years ago. Instant gratification could be most of the explanation, I agree. Because people not interested not commenting would not explain a factor 10 ;) You would not go on reading an uninteresting blog for long.
SletMy reader to comment ration is smaller than that. My last Words for Wednesday post got well over 1000 visits.
SletWow - I have over all my 11 years of blogging 3 posts with more than 1000 visits; one of those has 131167 views from when a Russian spam bot found it, so only two are real ones.
SletDoing some maths brings me to a comment to visit ratio of 1,5 per hundred for for the wole of my blog's life (Russian spam bots subtracted). Last year is at almost 3 per hundred. So my ratio of 1 in 10 was a bit too optimistic.
Oh, and I forgot ... almost half those comments are my own as I normally answer when people comments. So one to two comments per hundred views. Sigh, you were right.
SletAs far as i am concerned, i love your blog, your stories, the times you tell us about what you are doing in your life, and i try to comment (although i am sometimes a day or so behind in reading and commenting).
SvarSletSome might not comment because they might believe they have nothing much to add, although they did enjoy the story/poem/etc.
Thank you. You're so absolutely among the faithful handful mentioned above.
SletAnd as I have said before you - generally speaking not only you - do certainly not have to comment on every blog post. I fully understand busy dauys and full scedules. And when you comment, a single word, say "More" "Fine" "So bad" or something like it would suffice. Those I'm trying to reach are the ones not commenting ;) Which is well difficult, to put it mildly.
I am also guoilty of not always commenting. Mostly when I do not know what to say, am too busy, do not care one way or the other about the subject mentioned, or flatly disagree and do not want to get pulled into longhaired discussions about this and that. BUt mostly I comment. Not every day on every blog I read (would be a full time job then ;) considering that I also read blogs in languages where my skills in writing are sorely lacking), but often.