I wrote about three bloggers last week. I didn’t email them about it because I wasn’t looking for thanks, opting instead to share their names with you in a very modest way. If Seth Godin saw the praise, he didn’t show it. Danny Brown added a comment fairly quickly, and Chris Brogan tweeted me a line of thanks.
I blinked when I saw Chris’ tweet:
I didn’t blink at the content but the delivery.
The other day, I left a comment on Mack Collier’s blog about social media marketing and Mack replied… with this tweet.
I don’t understand why people are replying by Twitter and not on blogs. But they are hardly the only cases. Do you want to know how many times I write a blog article about a company and receive an email from the company or one of its marketing firms? Great content in the email, I reply back and thank them for writing me, and add a polite request to share a similar response in the form of a blog comment so readers like you can see their thoughts, not to mention recognition the firms are monitoring blog mentions.
You *DO* want to read comments by people and organizations I write about, right? I would, anyway. So, why reply by means other than commenting on the original blog article? I can’t think of a better way to market your brand and show you are listening to the social web than by adding an applicable comment. It’s not about me, it’s about you. How about it?
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Maybe this is a sign that you should embrace Twitter instead of leaving it behind?
On that note, since your absence on Twitter, how did you know about these replies even?
I do understand your wanting them to reply or comment on the article instead of Twitter, but if you think about it, Social Media is used for this purpose as well and I think has it’s place. Finding the right formula is the hard part…
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I’ve slowly weeded myself back into Twitter, per a comment I left halfway down the page at my Twitip guest post. Besides, I never claimed I wasn’t reading tweets.
Glad to see it is working out for you and hope to see you around the Twitterverse Ari.
Also, congrad’s on the Guest Post with TwiTip, just read the article over there…
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I agree that I get far more responses now on Twitter than on my blog. In the frenetic world of social media we try to cover all the bases in the least amount of time. A tweet takes less than a minute, a good blog comment at least five times that. I also agree that most bloggers appreciate a thoughtful comment very much and it raises their estimation of the commenter considerably. As well, blog readers take notice.
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It’s not about me, it’s about you. Sending me a tweet is about me. Adding a blog comment is about you. The difference is who reads it. When Chris tweeted me, I saw it but you didn’t. Maybe you don’t care that he tweeted me but when Danny commented and nobody else did, weren’t you a tad curious why?
I’d like to see comments on the actual post but there seems to be a stigma attached to commenting.
If you can’t write something brilliant then don’t write anything.
I obviously don’t subscribe to that theory,ha,ha..
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I’d agree with that stigma if the reader is not a blogger to begin with.
I enjoyed this post so much that I did a post about the topic on my site.
I mentioned you in the post several times. Just so you know..
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Ari, I’ve had the same issue on Facebook. I posted a link to my business’ Facebook page or a fans page about a new blog post, had some people read the post and comment with very helpful information (I missed in my blog post) on Facebook instead of the blog itself. I’ve had to ask if I could submit the comment in their name on my blog because the information was so helpful.
Also, I often subscribe to comments on articles I enjoy because the beauty of the blog is the ability to learn from the blogger as well as those commenting.
…and therein lies the rub of subscribing to comments, where if you see a comment you did not expect (or one you hoped to see), you might be more apt to comment again… and/or add a blog post of your own.
First of all, you should be glad that he took the time and notice to acknowledge you. He’s busy and awesome. Do you know how many people write nice things about him every day? Do you think he thanks them all?
Second of all, are you kidding? If Chris Brogan had commented here on this blog – do you know who would have seen it? YOUR current readers – or more likely, only those few that subscribed to the comments.
By replying to you on Twitter, he exposed you to all, what is it again, oh yeah, 118,778 followers that he has.
He did you a favor. He did way right by you.
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Suppose I wasn’t singling out Chris Brogan. Suppose I singled out a corporate or organizational brand, writing about them. Wouldn’t it be something if they sought out my blog post and volunteered a comment in response? It happens sporadically, but is not the norm. If it occurred more regularly–brands replying to customers–wouldn’t that be something?
It be great to see the reactions of companies to blog posts. This way they would really reach all readers, not only the author.
And it might open up the possibility to open up the discussion to the readers.
Thanks Tom, and your sentiments echo Matthew’s above, why he subscribes to subsequent comments.
Ari I left the tweet to you instead of replying to you on the blog because I knew you’d be on Twitter. I didn’t know if you’d come back to my blog or not.
And I understand why you would want to have companies leave a comment here as opposed to emailing you, but let’s remember that many people are NOT comfortable with leaving comments on blogs. Email is easier to understand, and to many people, it feels ‘safer’. If you never read blogs, the idea of leaving your first comment on one can be a pretty scary proposition. During every #blogchat I have people that will DM me their thoughts, and add that they ‘don’t want to say this publicly’.
It’s an interesting discussion to have, but I always come down on the side of the key point is, let’s get the interaction happening on terms YOU are comfortable with. If you’d rather email me than comment, that’s fine, the main point is the communication, not where it happens.
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Presuming you enable commenters to subscribe to future comments, anything posted by you or another I would see. I wouldn’t necessarily see a tweet. But moreover, blog comments are less for me and more for other people. It’s hard to create conversations in Twitter involving multiple people; it’s easier here with nested replies and comment subscription and search engine-indexed comments.
While I agree the focus ought to be on communication over location, there’s something else to be said for assumption that the customer prefers one location over another.
Ari, do you think this is a sign of the slow centralisation of the web to services like Twitter? For instance, have you seen your comment rates drop since you started on twitter?
I’d love to see some more stats on this and if it’s true, it’s a bit of a shame. I think blog comments are useful as responses to the same topic on the same page – beats having responses spread out like you said because then I can’t see what other people have said about it too.
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I’ve seen a huge spike in comments since the beginning of January — and Twitter had nothing to do with it. Rather, focusing on commenting on other blogs (something I used to do before Twitter took up that time) has led to reciprocity.
Ari, I can understand the frustration. Sometimes people will email me to ask me further questions on a topic instead of commenting on my blog.
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Don’t get me wrong, Rose. It’s not about my blog. I just don’t understand why people like to cross different social media streams together. By analogy, if I kneel down and ask you to marry me, would you respond by sending me a text message?
I’m with you on this one Ari, if they tweet or email you then only one person gets to see it, but if they leave a comment on your blog they would get so much more exposure as well as giving themselves a more approachable demeanor to the rest of your readers.
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There you go with exposure. Who doesn’t want to expose themself?
I love blog comments. I also like Twitter replies. And I’ve noticed this trend myself. Reading the other comments here (a benefit of comments left on a blog post that I would have missed if they were all on Twitter) I also find myself agreeing with Julie Roads. I think it comes down to convenience. Many (most?) people respond to posts without thinking about where the response is written and use the easiest method possible.
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So… if I don’t reply to you here but opt to reply to you by sending a fax because it’s convenient to me (as if!) then you’d be OK with that?
I know some affiliate networks that monitor and reply on blogs; people really do seem to eat it up.
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Wow, I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet:
Chris did more than shoot you a private email. He broadcast your twitter name and the fact that you’re kind to nearly 120K followers. He was advertising for you, and I’m willing to suspect you had an increase in followers and blog visitors because of it.
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When you consider the stream of http://twitter.com/chrisbrogan is 2/3 messages written to a person, how is the above different? It wasn’t advertising, but replying.
It may be me, but I think Twitter may be the “Lazy Mans” tool. I’m not a huge fan, but I suppose it does have its purpose. I would compare it to MySpace. You know MySpace was for those people who couldn’t figure out how to create their own Website. Twitter might be for those that can’t figure out how to create their own blog. I may be a little cynical here. Hope this isn’t too far off the subject.
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Really? Myspace? Honestly you have missed twitter completely. Myspace is for kids.
While Twitter has it’s downsides with all the spammers (I shut off my DM’s) it is no Myspace. Furthermore, most of the almost 2k followers I have are bloggers, which means they have a blog.
I would say you are being cynical to say the least.
With real time search, and social search becoming part of SERP’s (myspace isn’t in those) I think Twitter and Facebook are must haves for the future….
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Although I agree, I wanted to point out…almost all top marketers have or had a MySpace account; I don’t follow them, but they’re there.
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