No Comment!

Writing a book is hard work. However, I will get it done. Meanwhile these little short breaks are helping me get my battery recharged. It also allows me to bring to your attention issues that concern me and probably the majority of the blogsphere is dealing with. Here is another excerpt from my up coming book… you can check on this a IBGS.

(Following is a blog I wrote but never released that is on an issue that will be in my next book.)

I am finding it interesting how many people blog. Even more interesting is the number of people who do not. From talking to a number of people about blogging I can understand why most people do not blog. It takes a lot of time, or at least it takes a lot of time when someone first starts. However, there are a number of other reasons why people do not blog or comment on blogs.

Now, for those of us who do blog there comes a time when we ask ourselves…why am I blogging? Yes, after you decide what it is you want to blog about and exhaust yourself in covering every angle of that particular issue you stop and say…OK, Now what?

Or at least that is what I and a number of bloggers I know have asked ourselves.

Since I am a man on a mission and a person who needs to know the answer to the questions I have as well as questions people are asking me, I started surveying people on what is the number one reason they blog.

Actually there were five top reasons which boiled down to be just one when I analyzed them all. Those reasons were:

• I want to Help
• I feel the subject needs to be addressed
• I am the only expert on this subject
• I was told I could make a lot of money blogging.
• I am bored and have a lot of time on my hands

Out of all of these reasons the 35 people I surveyed provided there was one thing that kept them going….yep…Comments. Remarks or comments made to their blogs is what got their juices going to come back to the blogsphere, fire up the blog editor and write another blog.

However, all of them remarked that comments come few and far between. Even the big dog bloggers admitted that maybe one out of ten blogs get a single comment. Then others they have get several hundred comments.

So why don’t people who view the blogs not comment? Now this got into a lot of technical reasons mostly dealing with the fact that most blog services have security protocols everyone who is not a member of that service has to go through to just type in…”Great Blog!”

So that explains why about 40% of people don’t comment, but what about the 60% of the remaining people who do not have that obstacle.

Well I surveyed this situation also and the number one reason given as why they don’t comment on blogs has to do with safety.

I got comments like:

• “I am not exposing myself to the lunatics of the world.”
• “All I would be doing is feeding some crazed exhibitionist drive to get attention.”
• “Last time I commented I had 15 spam emails on my server ten seconds after entering the comment.”
• “I am not interested in every SEO, MLM or Home Base Business Opportunity in the world contacting me.”

Now, it is true enough, after I questioned these individuals further I found that most of them experienced these problems years ago when the security protocols were not in place or where contact information was provided with the comments and before spamware was more sophisticated.

So there is the problem. Most people out there who are capable of commenting on a blog have had some bad experiences with commenting so they just read along holding back on providing information that would add to the value of he issue being discussed.

There are other reasons that rise to the surface that also prevail as more of a likely possibilities of being a more viable reason people are not commenting. Reasons that range from, “I didn’t know you were blogging” to “Really, what I have to say would not really make a difference”. The list just keeps going on and on for reasons people do not comment to blogs.

I am sure you have a reason for not commenting on this blog.

There is also something very concerning that came out of the survey. I found that a good number of the people, 15% to be exact, use to blog but now have left the internet due to what is a growing problem hitting bloggers today.

The Hecklers…yep, they are out there and they numbers are growing. These are the people who have no problem what so every commenting on any subject and do so purposely. However, they usually take an attack approach towards the author’s point of view. They fill the comments with statements of aggression towards the author as a person. In most cases they skip the issue all together to pushing to provoke some sort of confrontation or online altercation from the author or his viewers.

Why do Hecklers want to do this? Well on the most part Hecklers want attention. They will do whatever it takes to get traffic to who they are or what they are doing. Most of the hecklers have no clue on what they are talking or care. They are just motivated to filling space in the comment section of a blog with keywords and vulgarity that will draw the viewers and the search engine spiders away from the author to their site. And in most cases it works. So that provokes more people, who are looking for that all mighty “site hit and page view” counts advertisers pay for, to become Heckler.

OH, there are some Hecklers who do not have that motive, do not have a blog site or a web-site to draw attention to. These hecklers are more into getting their jollies from floating around the internet laying bombs on bloggers sites just to see their gibberish on the internet.

Thank goodness for comment moderating programs and for the invention of the DELETE button they provide. Without the delete control most blog sites would become the online version of Saturday Night Wrestling with a totally incoherent thread of comments not even closely related to the subject.

I realize it is human nature to dispute issues. Heck, I expect to hear from several major bloggers who say they are not experiencing the issue I am blogging about here, but the major bloggers I know are going to dispute the issue without attacking me…Or at least I hope they don’t turn to Heckling. So I am clear, someone who disputes an issue with reason is not a Heckler.

Needless to say, the hecklers and the spammers are adding to the reasons why people do not want to comment to blogs and now to the reason people do not want to blog. This issue, along with all of the other deceptions some people feel the internet was built for, is another reason why people are leaving the internet and not coming back.

There are a number of other reasons people do not comment on blogs. Of course there is the classic remark for not commenting… “I just don’t have anything else to say”… But that is not you…right?

So, are there solutions to this problem? I am sure there…let me get to work on finding them and get back to you.

Until then…

Let me know how I can help.