Getting interaction

*bump*

My goodness - no replies? Come on, folks, let's give veinglory a hand!

In the days since you posted, have you come up with anything or heard from anyone offline that has helped?

An obvious one is to make the comments option larger - the light blue against white is very easy to miss, while having an 'author posted' section is pretty pointles if you're the only one who's going to make posts.

Beyond that, it's not really the kind of subject that's going to draw ultra-comments, since one of the near-guarantees of POD is that only you and the author are likely to have read both it and your review. People don't, by and large, comment to purely and simply compliment you on something you've written, and that kind of review doesn't offer a lot of talking points. Sad to say, but the best way of getting comments on this kind of thing is to find **** books and rip them up in comedy fashion - the Night Travels of the Elven Vampire way. Not that I'm suggesting that you do that.

I'm not surprised - the main link at the top isn't clickable, the second is lost in the Blogger links section where people are going to assume it's just an unconnected blog, and all of the text - links included - is extremely drowned out by the white background. The most noticeable link takes you to your Blogger profile, not your website. You really need to drive people towards the necessary links if you want them to click on them. As it is, the part of the screen that people focus on (the left column) doesn't so much as mention the main site.

You'd almost certainly get a better hit rate if you moved it into a nice obvious link at the top of the main reviews column. Similarly, if you check your static page, you'll notice that the call-to-action for people who've found a mistake on the page is much larger than the actual text. Little things like that make a lot of difference.

Sure - look in your template for ' <$BlogMemberProfile$>' (the tag that produces your profile information) and either replace it, preface it, or follow it with whatever you like.

<h1><a href="putyoururlinthisspacehere">Visit My Site</a></h1> is one quick and dirty way to do it in Minima, which looks like your template, or you can edit your CSS (at the top of the template) for something customisable.

I bring readers in by finding others' blogs and commenting on them. Usually, if I'm using blogger and they're using blogger, I'll get a bump through my profile.

Also being mentioned on high-profile blogs or in the comment section of high-profile blogs can get you viewers as well.

Also, if you title your blog something that people will search for (I used a TS Eliot quote), you might pick up a few readers who are looking for one thing but find your blog instead.

For the most part, I have a steady 8-10 people who read my blog on a fairly regular basis and maybe five or six who carry on conversations with me in the comments section.

When someone comments, I always make it a point to reply to them and incorporate what they say (a teaching trick). It makes people feel good when you point them out specifically. (I sure like it when I comment on someone's blog and they talk back to me. Then I know my comments didn't get swallowed by the ether).

Take the blogs you read on a regular basis (I have them altogether in my Bookmarks in Firefox and I can click a button that opens them all at once in tabs), and comment on them. Comment often. Eventually, you'll catch a few people who will wander over.

Also, exchanging links works...

Okay, this post has no real semblance. Sorry, twas doing it from the top of my heard...


PS. Also, I often check back at the blogs I comment on to see if there are more comments or if someone answered mine. I like discussions on my blog. It's not just about me talking or writing, it's about conversing with others.

I get different interaction levels depending on what I write about, and the interaction comes from different groups of people too. I had a whole series of fairly academic posts and no-one was saying anything, so I asked if anyone wanted more and some readers I didn't even know were there spoke up and said "yes, please". Once they did that, a couple of them started commenting, too.

I'm in the same boat. I'm getting a lot of hits and repeat visitors, but not many comments. I'm in the process of redesigning the page and rewriting the back end, so I hope the comments process will be easier when I'm finished.

I think there's lots of reasons why many folks don't comment. They may feel they need to come up with something substantive, that further contributes to the discussion rather than just a "Hi. Enjoyed this." They may be naturally reticent. They may have difficulty interpreting those nonsense letters that Blogger uses for filtering. (I know I've had to take two or three stabs at getting them correct at times.) It could just be a matter of not having a lot of time.

As Emerald noted, fellow bloggers are the most likely to comment, so one of the ways to attract them is to visit others' blogs and leave one yourself.

always end with questions. people love to share their opinion. my best posts are those on a fairly easy reading level, not overly-mentally challenging , and ask a question at the end.

Or say something really contraversial, like mentioning to your group of mostly liberal friends that you like the idea of McCain for President in '08

Good one Dawno. There was a radio talk show host in Toronto a few years ago who was (self) dubbed "The Lightning Rod of Controversy." I liked the line and of course, stole it.

I remember well the bruhaha I started when I boldly stated in a column that Canadians were sorta, in a way, kinda wishy-washy. At times.

And then you apologised for it, right? Some of my favorite bits in the Jon Stewart Presents America the Book are the little boxed items by the Canadian correspondant, Samantha Bee. For example:

"We Have a Media in Canada Too, You Know!"

Sorry to bother you again. I just wanted to pop in here for a jif and let you know we have media in Canada too! In fact we have all the media - ....

...I'm sorry if my abrupt conclusion has created any layout problems for this chapter."

Click to expand...

then there's a footnote and below the footnote is "Sorry about the footnote"

I discovered something interesting about interaction today. I suspect it is old hat to more experienced bloggers, but it was fun discovering it.

I am doing a series of blogs on women's hisitory, because it is Women's History Month in Australia and the US this March. Yesterday I didn't do an informative post: I linked to an online game. Not even a serious game. And I asked people to let me know what answers they got, because I was curious.

I got quite a few responses on my blog, but I was curious to know what was happening behind the scenes. I asked politely and was given the access log for 24 hours for the site the game is on (it being my publisher's website an' all). Lots of people checked out that game, and then someone accessed a quiz on the same site. They blogged it as the best quiz ever. A whole bunch of people who read this in their friends' lists (why I blog using livejournal - friends' lists are awesome communications tools) just went away and did the quiz and linked to it without telling either the person who found the quiz or me. Bunches and bunches of people who I have never come across before. If I hadn't seen the hits for those 24 hours, I would never have known that my blog entry spawned such activity.

What was really cool is that a number of the people who did one or the other quiz, went on to check me out on my publisher's site.

All in all, I got a real feeling that what was appearing on my blog was the tip of an iceberg. The iceberg has all melted now, but it was a fun phenomenon to watch.