How Has Your Site Become a Star on Social Bookmarking Sites?

So, you've started a blog. You sign up for social bookmarking sites Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit and maybe even more and start linking your posts to these, commenting on others' posts and adding friends to your networks. But whenever you log in to these sites to see how many "views" you are getting or "Diggs" or whatever, you keep seeing that you have either zero or only one. And when you look at your site's traffic analytics, you see you are getting virtually none from social bookmarking sites. What are you doing wrong?

What Deters You From Commenting?

An interesting #blogchat on Twitter tonight. The topic was how to get more comments on your blog.

Some said that people are deterred from commenting if comment moderation is enabled. (This means your post will not be published until the author approves it.) Some also said that captchas, or word verifications, the distorted images of warped numbers and letters you have to type out in a field to minimize spam on the site, also deter people from commenting.

These may be deterrents for a number of reasons.

For the first point about comment moderation, some people would rather their comment appear right after they click "Send" to maximize the number of visitors who see it, as your post will probably get its highest volume of traffic soon after it is posted. This means exposure for commenters. Another point is that potential commenters may not like the idea of their comment or others' being screened. These people might feel you will censor them, or reduce the comment discourse to praise, not publishing criticism.

And as for captchas, I think the main, if not only, reason is that they're just such a pain to read. Some people on #blogchat said that many people just can't be bothered with the extra step before their comment is delivered or published.

I've never been deterred by comment moderation or captchas. I want my message read and published no matter what the circumstances are. But as an experiment, I changed my blog settings. I no longer have comment moderation or a captcha enabled. I also entered my email into the comment notification box. And I set the comment section to open in a new window. My previous setting changed the page when people commented. I don't think that's wise because it will mean people will be less likely to go back and look at your other posts. It's more work. I'm not sure why I chose my original setting...

What does deter me from commenting is another sign-in, be it to the particular site or to a comment system like Disqus. I don't want to have to register for anything, or re-enter my username and password or try to remember a username and password to some site I seldom use.

I'm also very deterred by commenting on sites that don't provide a field for my URL. These are called no follow sites. With URL field, it's called Do Follow. Obviously, Do Follow takes visitors to your site if they click on your name after it's published. But Do Follow is also helpful to improve search engine optimization. I will comment anyway if there is something I really want to say. Also, I will occasionally put my URL into the comment field if I'm feeling particularly bold. I don't do that much, though, because  I think it looks a bit spammy. I will link to a particularly post if it's relevant, though, and explain the relevance. I have gotten great traffic through doing that.

I also refuse to visits sites whose owners have asked me personally to visit their blog, in a comment on my blog, in a Tweet, email, etc. If you can't be bothered to use my name, say anything meaningful about work, give any kind of incentive for me to visit your  blog and don't even tell me what your blog is about, than I want nothing to do with you. Traffic and comments must be earned. I'm not part of the blogosphere just to do favours for people. It has to be more meaningful than that.

And I am deterred from commenting again if people don't respond to my comments on their blog, don't visit mine (or others' apparently) -- especially if these people then complain that they don't get any comments! So many want something from nothing.

The blogosphere is a community. It's about building relationships, expanding your knowledge and engaging in meaningful discourse.

What deters you from commenting?

Call for Submissions

Are you looking for more exposure to your text or film? Do you want to build a network of bloggers? Do you want to boost traffic to your websites?

If you answered yes to these questions, email an electronic version of your work and related information to me at aj.ashbee@gmail.com Please include an image of yourself and links to your official website, Twitter account and Facebook Page if applicable. 

A list of possible submissions: novel, short story, non-fiction work, blog, short film, feature length film or documentary.

You can check out my David Sedaris book review and a short film review. 

Disclaimer: I will be completely honest in the review. I make no guarantees that I will write or publish a review, images, film clips or links of what you send me, but by sending me your work, you give me permission to do so. 

Comments on News Stories: Should the Outlets Have Responsibilities?

If you read the comments section of a news story, chances are you you will come across heated exchanges between commenters or abusive remarks about the subject of the story. Some of these people are passionately political, some appear to merely comment to antagonize.

I read a lot of comments sections from a lot of news articles and no representatives from the company seem to respond. Is this a problem? Should news companies moderate their stories to reduce abuse of other commenters and spam? Should news stories contribute to the conversation and respond to commenters' claims of biased research?

News outlets seem to publish the stories and then leave them alone and, perhaps this is a good thing. If they moderate (respond to, delete or edit) comments, commenters affected could interpret this as censorship. An attempt to keep allegations of unethical journalism quiet. Changing comments essentially means tailoring the discourse. Not only will that hurt the outlet's relationship with the affected commenters, but it will diminish the wonderful qualities of social medias: a loud voice for citizens and interaction between the people and "the man." -- Do people use that phrase anymore?

I don't know if broad social or journalistic change has ever come about because of a comment or comments on a news story, but the conversation about the news story has certainly influenced how I read the news. So many commenters pose questions about the reporter's research methodology, about the unanswered questions. Questions I hadn't asked when I first read the article, but looked back and realized what was missing. Comments have power. But only if people read them. 

Do you read comments on news stories or blogs? Do you see the value of reading these comments? Have you commented and what was your experience afterward? Do you think news outlets or bloggers have any responsibilities regarding comments submitted to their stories? To bloggers: do you moderate your comments?

Stop by my Twitter chat on Monday night from 9 pm to 10 pm EST to discuss these questions and how they should impact our moderating decisions as bloggers. The hashtag will be #beyond comments Everyone is welcome! Again, my Twitter name is @cartooninperson If you can't make the chat, but have something to say, please feel free to drop a comment here on my blog or on the Beyond Passing Time Facebook Page.

For those new on Twitter or new to Twitter chats, simply type #beyondcomments in your Tweets and anyone who types #beyondcomments in the search field will see them. If you search #beyond comments, you will see the discussion. All Tweets will show up live, so you don't need to refresh your page. Please feel free to comment here or email me at aj.ashbee@gmail.com if you don't understand or would like more information.

I will see you there! Please spread the word!

A Hairy Statement

I recently guest posted about the scandal of a woman's body hair at the blog the Tsaritsa sez. Check it out!

And just if you're curious, I shaved today -- not that it matters.

The Google AdWords Conundrum

The expiration date for my $100 -- now $75 since March 11 -- Google AdWords gift card is looming and I'm not sure what to do. I feel silly for passing up an opportunity to advertise my blog for free and potentially increase hits to it, but I just don't like the idea of putting my blog in Google advertising. Why? I hate most Google ads that I see. They're hardly ever relevant to what I'm searching for or what I'm looking at.

I remember when I used to have Google Ads on my blog. This was back when I wrote mostly about my ongoing health issues, so I kept getting ads about MRI centres and remedies -- that kind of thing. I wasn't even complaining about MRI wait times or anything, but because my words and phrases matched the tags chosen by certain advertisers, those MRI ads came to me. I wasn't about to promote MRI centres. That's not what this blog is about. And how can I support an MRI centre I haven't even used before?

Also, Blogger doesn't seem to have any meta tag formatting for pages. A meta description is the summary of a website you see when you look at in a search page. It's under the title of the page. So I can't have proper meta descriptions without doing some hardcore html work on my blog's template. It's complicated and I don't really understand how it works. Instead, if you Google my blog title Beyond Passing Time, under each entry title, you'll see meta descriptions that just have lumps of text from that post, or even lumps of texts from comments. I'm not about to post that in Google ads because they wouldn't really make sense to people. Who would click on them?

My blog hasn't suffered from my lack of proper meta descriptions, though. By analyzing my blog statistics, I regularly see that people click on my blog after finding it on Google through searches. My discussion about the film Black Swan still gets traffic this way. I'm happy that Google ranks my posts high in certain searches. I'm confident that continuing to write about what people want to read will bring more traffic to this blog than Google Ads ever will.

Maybe I'd get even more traffic with better meta tags, as having popular and relevant words and phrases in your meta descriptions is important for search engine optimization of your site.

And maybe advertising my blog on Google would draw great traffic to it if I had good meta tags. Or who knows, maybe I'd get better traffic through Google advertising even with my bad meta descriptions. I don't know. I might take advantage of the $75 remainder of my Google AdWords gift card... Just to see what happens. I think advertising my poor meta tags would make me look like an unprofessional writer/amateur webmaster. Plus, I don't click on Google Ads. I don't even read the whole ad if the meta description is not a summary of the page. I don't expect people to do or hope that they will do what I wouldn't do myself.

Plus, I think the hippie in me is afraid of selling out. That's also partly why I very seldom post Amazon ads on here. I don't expect that if I put Google and Amazon ads on my site again, that I'd get enough clicks on the ads to get a significant profit. That's where the profit comes from. You don't get money from people seeing the ad on your site. Only if they click on it. And the amount of money depends on how much the site proprietor pays per click. It's not worth putting ads up just to make pennies a month.

Also, I just don't like the appearance of Google Ads. The design makes the ads looks so spammy and unreputable.

I think offering me free advertising and thanking me for using their services was a good online pr move on Google's part. It shows that the company is grateful for my help and wants my site to succeed, but also, like any freebie promotion, it can hook people in, so they'll want to continue using the service after they've used up the free part.

Do you ever click on Google Ads? Would create a Google Ad for your own blog? If you do advertise using Google Ads, does it generate significant traffic to your blog?