Let’s Talk
Nov 8th, 2008 by Cathy Nelson
Steve Dembo’s latest challenge in the 30 Days to Being a Better Blogger challenge calls for participants to comment. I wholeheartedly agree with this. I will take it one step further than Steve did in his challenge to improve our blogging skills. I will list reasons I do it, encourage others, and challenge you to take it one more step.
Reasons to Comment
- It truly does extend the conversations
- You get to exposed to others who may resonate with your thinking
- You expand your personal (professional) learning network
How has “commenting” been beneficial for me?
I participated in Will Richardson’s Powerful Learning Practice (PYP) program last winter, and believe my first ever contact with him was through commenting on his blog, and he on mine. Talk about super encouragement. I then was able to “meet up” with him in other virtual spaces, including twitter, ustream, K12Online, and other locales, which eventually led to meeting him in person for the ever important face-to-face connection at places like NECC and Educon 2.0.
I have also commented frequently on Karl Fisch’s Blog. This led to cultivating a relationship here. I followed him in other networking circles, and I’ll be gosh darned if last winter I wasn’t invited to participate in his school’s blogging project as their entire ninth grade read and then discussed Dan Pink’s A Whole new Mind. I attribute my luck here all the way back to cultivating a relationship with Karl initially through commenting. I asked Karl why he selected me out of all the gazillions of forward minded thinkers he had to choose form, and he simply said, “Because Cathyjo, you are part of my network.” It was enough for me, and quite a rich experience to boot!
So the seemingly insignificant task of commenting can lead to greater opportunities. It can open so many suprising doors.
My additional challenge to you:
Please, Please, PLEASE provide a link to not only the RSS for your posts in your blog, but also the RSS for comments made in your blog. I do not like to just enjoy your posts, I also VERY MUCH like to enjoy the conversations you engage in there as well. That is only possible if i can subscribe to both your posts and comments. Please check you blog and make sure you have added the meta data that provides readers those ever important links. ( I have dropped a few blogs of big names in the bloggoshere I have subscribed to previously before just because I realized i was only getting one side of that conversation.)
Thanks Steve for this challenge. Want to join in this challenge? You still can. There is no official begining or end to join.
Image Attribution:
30d2bbb by Jason Robertshaw is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at 30d2bbb . pbwiki . com.
Hi Cathy,
I never thought about adding a feed for my comments. I personally don’t usually subscribe to comments of other blogs but simply check back if I have infact posted a comment. I will have to learn how to do that with my current WordPress theme / configuration. This has been a big learning curve for me going from Blogger to my own hosted WordPress installation.
Thanks again,
Jim Beeghley
Teaching the Civil War with Technology
http://blog.teachthecivilwar.com
PS: We will be spending Christmas in Myrtle Beach.
@Jim – In the wordpress dashboard go to design–>theme–> and add meta to the side bar. It will add both feeds plus a link to site admin and wordpress. I have it on mine in the lower right. Some themes out there have both feeds as a part of their set up, but my theme (Misty Look) did not, so i added the meta widget in–which provides the feeds.
Ya know, I never really thought much about the comments RSS feed. I like to subscribe to comments that I’ve left via email, but didn’t really think much about the RSS feed. I’ve edited off of Teach42, but when I work on my sidebar (future challenge) I’ll be adding that back in.
And thanks for sharing your experience commenting. I often have people asking me how to get people to read their blogs. The first piece of advice I always give them is that if they want people to read their blog, they should be spending a good chunk of time commenting on other people’s. It makes the personal connection and then people follow your links back.
Great tips!
@Steve–thanks for visiting and leaving “me” a comment. I really don’t think I need the challenge but it does give me something to focus on as well as food for thought as I prepare for staff developments or conference presentations. The challenge is reminding me of many things I now take for granted in blogging. So I do appreciate the effort here. And now I can say OMG I got a comment from THE Teach42!!
I couldn’t agree more about the importance of commenting on the posts of others as a step in building your own blog. Among those outside the blogosphere as well as many new bloggers, there is a misconception of the blogger as someone standing on a soapbox shouting at everyone else. To those who understand it and practice, it quickly becomes evident that blogging is actually much more conversational. It’s a two-way street. It took me a while to learn that but once I did, I found more comments on my own posts and more visits to my blog in general.
Thanks for reminding me how important commenting is on people’s blogs I read. I read a lot of blogs and I am guilty for not leaving comments. I will try to improve in that area. Thanks for waking me up.
Bill