I recently read about how to increase readership and the use of a blog. One of the major suggestions is to respond to the comments. This begins an interaction between people commenting and makes everyone feel more comfortable commenting.
So, instead of just posting, I have provided some comments today. Thank you to everyone that has commented. I will be publicizing this blog in the near future. I want to make sure that I understand how all of the software works, before expanding our audience. I should note under the cluster map, we have some vistors from out of the US. I will also provide some analysis of the number of visitors in the near future.
Mike,
I think you’d get a lot more readers and commenters if you allowed them to create a username and post anonymously. (I’m going to give this a try when I submit this in a minute.) When a poster needs to use their real name, provide their email address and website, it limits the tenor of what people will say in this public forum and decreases your readership.
For example: I see that your most frequent poster is Fred Leonard. Since we all know Fred, if a person didn’t care for Fred’s well-publicized position on issues, they may never look at your blog again. However if Fred’s username was “snowboarddude,” or some such thing, people may be more interested in reading his comments.
Just my opinion!
OK, it seems to work that you can use a name, in my case “A Parent.” Mike, perhaps you want to publicize that people needn’t use their actual names…. or maybe I just have….
Cheers!
A Parent
I tried to set up the blog to allow comments with and without actual names. It is up to the person posting their comments. I get an email when a post is completed, and if there is post that is inappropriate, I can delete it.
perhaps people would tune in more just to hear what Fred had to say?…at least he takes a stand on something…most people do nothing…imagine how different things would be if more people got involved with anything?
Yes, that’s my point exactly. By listing Fred Leonard as my example of a blog commenter, I used reverse psychology in suggesting that people would not want to read the blog if Fred were involved. By doing so, I believe I actually increased the blog’s readership!