Ben;

I just read about your new role in Grasshopper Media over on Chris Brogan’s site. Congratulations! Chris has a huge passion for this emerging market, and he’s excited about your take on the business angle, which has the rest of us who know Chris excited for the future of Grasshopper.

Perhaps we’ll see both of you down at PodCamp Pittsburgh in November?

Best wishes.

Justin

Hi Justin – thanks for stopping by and commenting.

I’m not sure about PodCamp Pittsburgh, although I’m sure Chris will be there.

I’m definitely looking at PodCamp Toronto though in February – seems so far away though!

Keep in touch, and thanks again!

I totally agree. I’ve done the same tactics (ending posts in questions, etc.). If you don’t engage them, they will read and move on. Ask for their opinion. They’ll give it!

Thanks for the feedback Davezilla. I’m glad you liked my thoughts.

Interlinking – now there’s a great idea. I came over here from your 8 Steps…One At A Time.

Some good advice here, too. It’s not easy making the headline both “in yer face” but also SEO friendly. But it is possible.

I just wish my recent headline had grabbed a bit more attention.

Rory – the thing with headlines (and posts) is that it’s very hard to know what will be popular. I’ve written some posts that I thought were uber-gems, and no one seemed to care. Others, people hop all over.

Your post about Digg and James Kim looks like the type of thing that could get noticed on Digg (save for the fact that it’s somewhat anti-Digg.) When it comes to Digg, I’ve found it’s almost all a question of who Diggs the post first – if it’s a top Digger you’ve got a shot at making some noise, otherwise it’s very tough.

I hear you, Ben. And thanks for the frank comments, they are very helpful. It is too easy to fall into the trap of wanting to write the killer headline, and that just goes against the “One Person At A Time” ideology. So it’s pretty much doomed to failure.

Hey, if I cared so much about the James Kim story I would throw it into the fray, wouldn’t I? It’s just that I have been a bit reticent (maybe read “cowardly”, or “overly cautious” if you are a forgiving sort)D’you know, I might just go over and do that now, just for the helluvit

Hey Rory – I don’t think trying to write a killer headline is a trap. Overly-obsessing is — cause that’s never healthy.

The truth is, even the best headline might not work sometimes, but certainly there are better headlines than others out there.

I spend a lot of time on headlines. Not all of them are gems. Not all of them are intended to get dugg or generate lots of traffic. For some I do hope that’s the case.

Best resource: http://www.copyblogger.com.

Ben, thanks for taking the time to comment on this. It’s a learning curve for me. Your honesty is extremely helpful.

I’m subscribing!

And I have thrown the story to the wolves…gulp!

Good luck with the wolves Rory, and thanks for subscribing!

Since I just got started with blogging, I’m looking more and more for articles about blogging. While I enjoyed this post, I don’t totally agree with every aspect.

Item number 2, “keep posts short.” I’m not totally buying this one. I thing more appropriately, keep posts succinct and meaningful. Anyone can write a short post but sometimes short equals senseless. I would argue to focus on quality and not quantity.

Despite my slight disagreement, I did enjoy the article. Glad I found your site.

Bret – you’re certainly right – quality over quantity rules the day, every day, all the time.

I could have said “Succinct and meaningful” but I was trying to be “short” about it. *laugh*

The goal of this particular post was on how to generate more comments.

At the end of the day I do think shorter posts will result in more comments. That doesn’t mean a post of 1 sentence will generate more comments than a post with 10 sentences. But a post that goes on for pages will be very hard pressed to generate commentary.

Thanks for the comment, and I hope we’ll see you around some more in the future!

Now, this is what I was looking for while scanning the numerous articles on successful blogging – how to get more comments. Thanks for the tips.

Ben,

I remembered some of your suggestions when I wrote my most recent blog entry. Alas, I forgot 2 of them, namely, keeping it short and ending with a question. Hopefully practice will make perfect. Please do visit my site and comment on the post if you have the time. I am not as rabidly passionate about Open Source as it appears in the post. But then I was commenting on someone else’s article and he did get my dander up!

I agree totally!

haha! I couldn’t help it!

Good post though

I’m a new blogger, and I’ve gotten few comments so far. Nevertheless, #3 worked for me a couple of days ago when I wrote about the incident between AirTran and the family the airline kicked off the plane. Not only did it elicit some comments (and quickly), I learned alot about why people feel the way they feel.

KWiz – that’s great. There’s a difference between taking a stand and being an abusive jerk. If you take a stand, express yourself intelligently and focus on your reasoning you’ll illicit (hopefully), smart, worthwhile comments. If you’re a brash, argumentative type you’ll get comments, but most of them won’t further the dialogue.

Thanks for commenting, hope to see you around.

I’m stymied… I’ve posted a variety of longer and shorter blog entries, very opinionated and also completely uncontroversial, and posts that were sorta open-ended. Yet, with it all, I still get very few comments. My stats indicate that people are visiting and I’ve gotta assume that they’re sticking around long enough to read some of my ramblings, but only rarely do they comment…

Rob – it is tough. My only thought after reading a handful of your posts is that the content isn’t focused on a particular subject. You’ve got lots of interesting posts, but they range from topics like music, your heating at home, etc.

It might be a question of your audience being very dispersed – so they find your site (let’s say through Google) but there’s not enough similar content to keep them engaged and coming back.

It’s also a fairly personal blog, and I think those naturally get fewer comments than advice or news-related ones.

Maybe it’s time for a contest? Use comments to determine the winner, offer some kind of prize, do something fun that would engage your audience…

Thanks for the input, Ben. You’re right, the post topics are kind of all over the place, but that is sort of the nature of it being a personal blog.

I do like the idea of a contest. I’ll have to work on that…

One odd thing is that I refer to (a.k.a. “pimp,” “hawk,” or “trumpet”) my blog at work fairly often (although I do try to be subtle so it doesn’t become annoying) yet few of my buddies from work seem to frequent the site. More often, the folks who’re keeping up with it regularly are friends from halfway across the country.

Rob – I think that makes sense though – friends from far away don’t get to see you regularly, so they’re using the blog to keep up to date.

And I agree in terms of it being hard to get comments on a personal blog, I think that’s the nature of a personal blog.

Short but godd article. But sometimes is Ok to write some really useful and long article…