Joining in the conversation
24 August 2006 | Categories: Blogging, Social media | 2 comments
Lorelle on Wordpress features lots of interesting resources and tips on how to make the most of blogging on the Wordpress platform. Earlier this week she posted a blogging challenge to encourage people to post comments on blogs. She gives some sensible advice on commenting on blogs too, such as making sure that what you say adds to the conversation, and showing that you”ve read and understood the original post.
Like many people, I only comment on a small number of the blogs that I read regularly. There are some I’ve been reading for a year or more without ever leaving a comment. This behaviour is known as ”lurking” - a term that was originally used to describe people who read discussions in around online communities or message boards without actively participating by posting messages themselves.
Sometimes you need a push to move from passive to active engagement, and I’m using Lorelle’s challenge as mine. For the next few days I’ll be finding opportunities to post my first comments on blogs I already read regularly, and I’ll also be taking time to dip into other people’s blogrolls and hopefully discover some new regular reads. When the week’s up I’ll update this post with links to the posts I’ve commented on.
If anyone else needs a push towards joining in the conversation on blogs they read, why not take part too?
lorelle’s challenge is a good one, and, as a bit of a lurker myself, i can relate. i’ve learned in the last year that commenting on other blogs really is an effective, easy way of increasing your visibility… not to mention that clicking on other people’s comment urls is a nice way of discovering new favorite corners of the blogosphere and beyond.
And I expect a full report on the experience.
Part of these challenges is not only taking the challenge and doing the tasks, but analyzing them afterwards to help you and others learn about what you learned in the process.
Part of the joy of blogging is helping others learn by our doing, so they can do, too. You’ve started out great by reflecting upon your expectations of what taking the challenge will do for you, so I look forward to reading about what the challenge “meant” to you.