This Post Generated 500 Comments

A blogging friend of mine made a very foolish bet with me and said that I couldn’t write a post that would generate 500 comments. I would like to say that it was a tongue-in-cheek sort of remark but it wasn’t.

It was supposed to be an insightful remark that said something profound about popularity and importance in the blogosphere but he missed the mark. Comments aren’t currency. They aren’t social proof of significance, popularity or importance.

At best they are something that some bloggers use for self validation but even that is questionable.

Smarter bloggers look at their comment sections as a resource that they can mine for blog fodder. Smarter bloggers recognize that not every comment is equal in value but they never say that because they know that people remember how you made them feel. Make people feel stupid and you create issues for yourself.

Smart bloggers understand that the best comments advance and expand the discussion. Those 500 comment posts often have some of those gold nuggets but rarely if ever are the majority of those comments of that caliber.

Look Deeper

The posts that receive the most comments aren’t always those that are the most important, educational or interesting. Sift through this blog and you’ll see heated discussions about whether to refrigerate peanut butter, whether the Great Lakes have beaches and how to hard boil an egg.

Some of those discussions were great but does 198 comments on peanut butter make me an authority on it.  I don’t know. What I do know is that you don’t have to be a dad blogger to agree that toys that make noise are really freaking irritating or that it would be all kinds of fun to replace the signs at Ikea with signs we made up.

Seriously. One day I am going to have a field day roaming through that place and renaming the furniture with something that I think the Swedish Chef might say. Can’t way to see my Skflitenburger next to a Skedoodle and Nugenshtup. Or perhaps a Shtupzen in the bedroom might need a Snorzenfloggen.

Want to know something about dear old Jack? I have never driven a car in the snow. I have the keys to the one in the picture and have driven it many times but I haven’t ever driven it or any vehicle in the snow. Kind of funny to think about because I have been driving for almost thirty years.

But that is tied into our discussion about comments and looking deeper. Sometimes what you see isn’t what you get. Sometimes what you see is something more or something less.

People might tell you to chew Trident because 3 out of 5 dentists recommend it but who are those dentists and what do we know about them. Are they still practicing? Are/were they “good’ dentists that you would want to see or send your children to? How much were they paid to endorse Trident and does that matter?

Am I the only one who wonders about a chewing gum named after a sharp object. Did you know that I called Quaker Oats because I wanted to them to tell me the name of the Quaker on the package.

I don’t know if this particular post will generate 1 comment or a thousand but I can guarantee that it will be read. And that my friends is better than the legend of Babe Ruth calling his shot because very few people know if that happened but thousands know that this post was read.

Do me a favor and go read the posts that I have put together for Nanowrimo and let me know if you love/hate it.

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