I’ve been a horrible challenge participant and fallen behind. Here’s a stab at catching up and keeping you all up to speed on both my thoughts and the ideas shared in this challenge about evaluating and improving blog commenting.
Day 23: What Makes a Great Comment?
Describe the feature and characteristics of a great comment: Personally, one thing I think makes a blog post interesting, inviting, and better is the questions it asks and not necessarily the questions it answers. So, this carries over to comments. When I leave a comment on someone else’s blog, I like to take a stab at answering or responding to the main question asked but also like to include another question. This keeps the conversation going and what are blogs and comments for but enabling conversation!
Day 24: Comment on a Blog Written in a Foreign Language
There are growing numbers of translating services available online to help you find and read blog posts and websites that are generated in other languages. Although this isn’t a blog, for this challenge I started following and sent messages to a few Twitter users from Madrid. I was actually feeling nervous when I sent the first message in Spanish, but received kind replies and have enjoyed following the new connections.
Day 25: Take a Break!
I have obviously taken a break from some blogging/commenting but it is all due to heavy work load of a project about to launch that I will blog about in a few minutes!
Day 26: Exploring Other Ways to Comment
Explore how you might use multimedia for a richer commenting experience. Consider whether or not you think multimedia is a better option and how it might impact learning.
I am excited by enriching conversations by multimedia commenting and look forward to incorporating more into my own blog. I often find that I begin to leave a comment on another blog and realize I’ve written a few paragraphs and still have more to say. So, I will just turn that comment into a blog post here and link back to the post as a more interesting and fleshed out comment. This is the same for linking back to posts that spur you to get out thoughts using Seesmic, Utterz or something similar. I’m curious if any of you have enjoyed exploring new options for commenting/posting/sharing.
Day 27: What Do You Communicate About Your Personal Brand Through Comments
To me, this goes back to the “What makes a great comment” question. I think that much of what I try to do both on this blog and in the many events/trainings I coordinate and help with is to ask more questions than answer more questions. I love sharing the ideas, thoughts, experiences and opinions I have about nonprofits and social media. But, I think that there is a great deal of value in the questions we can ask to help guide strategies, adoption, decisions, and work. So, in a face-to-face meeting, email, blog or comments, I’m always trying to stir up, consider and provoke questions. How am I doing?
Day 28: What’s Your Blog Commenting Strategy?
Commenting wasn’t something I really looked at strategically prior to this 31 day challenge. Something that I have taken from all of these wonderful opportunities for self reflection and evaluation is that commenting, just like blogging and other social media practices, needs to be done strategically if it is going to be successful and at the same time not drive you mad. There are so many insightful and interesting blogs out there that I could read and comment all day long, every day. That wouldn’t be very strategic, though. I have decided to try to have ‘blogging’ days and ‘commenting’ days where I do one or the other with the amount of time I would otherwise try to spend on both together. So far, I am really finding it a good balance and much less stressful as I’m not worried about commenting too long and not getting to the blog, or vice versa. Do you have a strategy for your commenting? Or commenting rules you use when leaving comments?
There are lots of questions embedded in the different topics above, but, one thing I’d also like to hear from you is a suggestion for a blog you read but have never commented on and what keeps you from taking that next step in the conversation.
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31-Day Comment Challenge: Wrap-up
Day 29: Write a Commenting Guide for Students
Many of the challenge participants work in the education world (’edubloggers’ if you will) so a student-related topic is very appropriate. The challenge focuses on the creation of an age-appropriate guide for commenters. I don’t think I’m the target audience of this challenge, but I’d still like to get something out of it!
When I think about my blog and the comments/commenters here, a guide, per se, doesn’t seem as appropriate. Perhaps a statement: “Be nice—everyone has a mother, and they may be one, too.” At the end of the day, as much as I want to build community, trust, and openness on this blog through comments and conversations, I do want people to have respect for one another and remember that you may not really know who you are addressing (or offending) with a statement.
Day 30: How Can You Use What You’ve Learned about Commenting to Change Your Teaching Practices?
Again, this one doesn’t speak to me as directly as many others, but I’d like to twist it a bit to do so. What have I learned about commenting that has changed my blogging?
I have continued to ask questions at the end of my posts, and I very much enjoy it when you all share your answers. I think the biggest thing, though, is the questioning of my own practice of replying to comments personally in email instead of publicly on the blog. That has changed how I reply here on this blog, and has also changed how I comment elsewhere - whether I expect a direct reply or not, etc.
Day 31: What Were Your Top 5 Lessons from the Comment Challenge?
Oh, gosh! I don’t know that I have 5! I’ll try:
I guess that’s it! Thanks for following along with me - I hope you got something out of it as well.
Did you participate in any of the challenges? If you were going to evaluate your commenting strategy, how would you classify it? What would you change about it?