No bullshit social publishing news and opinions. Follow Brandon.
According to the New York Daily News, which is the only paper from New York City worth reading, Elizabeth Edwards is trolling Rielle Hunter in blog comment sections on posts related to her. Rielle was John Edwards mistress whom he fathered a love child with.
When trolling becomes the past time of mainstream celebrities and folks in the political realm, it’s time to reconsider why this feature is offered in the first place.
Here Are The Facts
Some very stupid people out there want you to believe blog comments are the measurement for a blogs success. More often than not, these are the same people peddling books, webinars, private coaching sessions, and even a hand job in the champagne room if you acknowledge their existence.
Guess what? Like Twitter followers, it’s not an accurate measurement. The only two measurements of any website’s success are:
1) Unique traffic
2) Conversion.
And I’m not talking, “Did they click on the link?” I’m talking, “They clicked on the link, bought the item if there was one, and told their friends about it.”
Everything Else Is Bullshit!
RSS? Bullshit. Most people don’t use it.
Social Network Followers? Bullshit unless they’re coming back to your website and successfully converting.
Blog Comments? Bullshit. If less than 1% of your audience is doing the commenting, and only a fraction of that 1% is contributing to the discussion, it’s not an accurate indicator of success. Don’t believe people who tell you otherwise.
Darren Rowse, a blogger of note if there ever was one, wrote in both his first book, and the superior follow-up 31 Days To Build A Better Blog, that less than 1% of your blog’s audience will actually leave a comment.
Having blogged / authored websites for ten years now, I can vouch for that statement. I can also vouch for other facts, like the existence of mountain lions in New York, and that cats are awesome.
Most blog commenters fall into one of three groups:
1) The Super Fan: A person who pretty much restates what you said and / or sucks up to you.
2) The Dick: Trolls, Goblins, Ogres, oh my!
3) The Spammer: The spammer takes many forms, but it usually ends with “blah blah blah, come to my website. Robocop and Unicorns rock.”
“But Brandon, What About The Discussion?”
The discussion is mostly overrated, but I’ll give you that there are some smart people in that fraction of the 1%, and I enjoy reading their comments. But you know what I enjoy more? When they email me.
My attitude is this, if someone likes your content and wants to send you some meaningful feedback, they’ll jump through the “hoop” of sending you an email. Why? Because they always do.
I feature my contact information on this website for people to do just that, and I receive a lot of great feedback from these posts in that fashion.
Almost all feedback comes from people who don’t want to leave a comment, and from people who do comment, but want to keep the discussion going between them and I, not everyone else.
People who advocate for blog comments also overlook the importance of these one-on-one conversations. They’re way more valuable than thirty pages of mostly shit.
It’s been this way for me since 2002 on every iteration of one of my websites. If anything, the volume of these correspondence have increased every year since 2002, not decreased, and I’m going to throw this out there: The myth of Facefeed or Twitter cutting into blog comments is inane.
There’s no hard evidence to suggest a change in behavior, but I haven’t seen any for this or other website that I frequent, so I’m going to file that claim under “utter crap“.
You know who’s perpetrating that argument? People looking for web traffic and something to talk about because they can only blog about Twitter’s $1 billion dollar valuation so many times.
While we’re on that subject: No one cares how much Twitter or Facebook is worth.
How To Build A Better Blog Without Blog Comments
Seth Godin doesn’t allow comments on his blog. Of course, counting Seth’s blog as a naturally popular blog is sort of a cheat, because he was established well before the blog even started.
But Tucker Max and Maddox don’t provide the option to leave a blog comment and their blogs traffic and success has been 100% organic.
Julie Powell allows comments on her blog, but they’re on a seperate page and are almost entirely of the “Super Fan” variety. Plus, she also cheated on her boyfriend, so what does she know!
I’m kidding, but I really hated “Julia & Julia” and so I needed to get that shot in.
If we’re measuring the success of films based on blogs, “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” was way better in terms of quality, although it’s theatrical success is yet to be determined.
Christian Lander of “Stuff White People Like” (whom you might have seen interview me) also allows blog comments, but the people commenting there are mostly retarded. It’s true. If you think that blog is racist, I have some paste I’d like to offer you for breakfast.
You notice a theme with my examples? They’re not social publishing experts / gurus / ninjas / jedis / whatever the flippant moniker du jour is this week.
Every example I used above are people who have successfully bridged the gap from blog to book and film, except Seth Godin, he’s just too awesome not to include in a blog post even if you hate Squidoo (I’m not a fan either, it’s like Wikipedia without the mob of nerd elite who police their articles.)
And really, if I’ve taught you anything here, it’s that when you disagree with something you encountered on some social publishing medium, you reply through social publishing.
Write a blog post. Do a video. Do something creative and inventive. Commenting is cheap, easy, and ineffective in furthering your point.
Remember: The blog owner controls the playing field, so you can’t win in their comments section no matter how right you are.
There’s greater benefit in generating your own content for a reply than there is in leaving a blog comment. Let’s leave blog commenting for dead, just like John Edwards presidential hopes.
And no, that joke isn’t too harsh. He cheated on his wife, while she was battling cancer and running his campaign, so screw him.
(Just a quick update: I’ll document this week how I plan to turn off the blog comments here on SBI, so I know there’s a bit of irony in commenting in the blog comment section on a post about how blog comments are dead and mostly useless.)
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hey very nice blog!! Man .. I will bookmark your blog and take the feeds also…