Breaking the Blog Rules

Recently I've noticed some interesting things about the numbers of comments on my posts. I have blathered on about this subject a lot in the past (Oh, Blog It!, Anyone for Comments? and How to Win Friends...) but there is always more to learn in this blogging business and my thoughts on comments continue to develop.

It is noticeable that some subjects gather more comments than others. When I express my opinion on anything, it seems that I get plenty of comments in reply. Anything on blogging or computing also reaps plenty of response. The memories of Africa and England usually get a reasonable number of comments and the same for anything to do with my view of America. But the short stories get short shrift from readers, it seems.

What is going on with fiction? Why does it elicit such a small response? I think there are several answers to these questions, most related to the medium of blogging. My longer stories that I split into a serial require a huge commitment of time and effort from the reader. In theory, they should bring people back to read each episode but most readers don't have the time and the will to do so. It's the regulars who will follow a serial through to the end; visitors just move on to the next blog.

It is more difficult to see what is happening with the single-post stories. They are specifically designed for blogging, being no longer than most readers can cope with and require no more commitment than any other post, I would have thought. Is it that the majority of people don't like fiction? This could be, although the thousands involved in blogging must include a still-sizeable number of fiction readers surely.

Perhaps the stories do get read but are less easy to comment on than opinion posts. Although there is usually a weird opinion hiding in most of them, it could be that it is too well hidden and so doesn't annoy people enough to make them comment. Or maybe the stories are awful and people are too polite to say so.

Whatever the reason, it seems that it's blogging suicide to post fiction. If we want a continuously expanding reader base, the natural thing would be to go for factual and opinion posts only. There has been a tendency to do this in my blog anyway, but it's caused more by the enormous creative effort demanded by fiction than any conscious strategy.

Understand that this does not discourage me as regards fiction; it's interesting, that's all. I will post fiction as and when I can and bear the consequences in decreased numbers of comments. Fiction has advantages for me that I cannot ignore: it requires more creativity than other posts and this prevents me from becoming lazy, it is useful practice for writing non-blog fiction, and it gives me a vehicle for thoughts that I would not release naked and ashamed into the world.

Another interesting fact to emerge from an examination of comments to my latest posts is that regulars sometimes disappear and visitors are commenting more often. I think I know what is happening with the regulars: many of them are becoming successful bloggers and find they have no time left over for the established blog rounds and commenting. This has happened to me so I understand it very well. Some find out that there's a world out there and leave for other things. And I suspect that there are those who like some of my posts and not others.

The increase in visitor comments is harder to explain. It may just be that the increasing frequency of opinion posts in the blog is reaching those who have an interest in the subjects I pontificate upon. I will admit that I have become more controversial in recent months, perhaps to see how much I can get away with; this might have some influence on the matter too.

But a closer inspection, coupled with a look at comments received in BlogExplosion, reveals that many visitors are recent arrivals in blogging. It seems very likely that some like whatever post happens to be on top but don't realize how I wander from subject to subject; later posts are just as likely to put them off. So another principle of successful blogging is vindicated: choose your subject and stick to it.

Except that I won't. Like my attitude to fiction, this is an area where I won't compromise for the sake of popularity. I like having the freedom to talk about whatever comes to mind. It would make sense to have several blogs, each dealing with a different theme, but I won't do that either. At the moment I post once every two days; with several blogs, the update rate would be very low indeed. And that's another way of committing blog suicide - to die in pieces rather than as one.

Perhaps my glory days of comments are over. Maybe the blog has become so unpredictable that nobody can stick with it through all its sudden changes of subject. It still hauls people in from all over the place so I think I'll just keep plugging away and see what happens.

In the end, the blog is me and it's what I do.