My good friend Wally Bock commented on my post ” Why Do I Blog” saying
“What I didn’t anticipate was that commenting on other blogs would be such a great experience. Now I tell coaching clients that they should read blogs on topics of interest, but also comment. It helps you learn, but, more importantly, it makes you part of the conversation and a wider community”
and his comments got me thinking some more…. which is the point of this post really.
I love when people comment on my blog. I have a band of regular commentors and from time to time somebody new comes by and takes the time to tell me what they think. Sometimes they become regulars too which is good. As a blogger I gain a huge amount from the comments others make. We don’t have to agree - the point of the conversation is to share your perspective - and knowledge - and maybe provoke some futher thoughts.
Wally tells me that he suggests to his coaching clients that they read blogs and make comments. I think this is a great idea. I found it really challenging to do this in the early days so I ”lurked” for a bit until I plucked up the courage (As an aside - when I talk about social networking and lurking my audiences love it…they recognise themselves and know that they are not alone. Hopefully it helps them come out of those shadows!) . Then I found a couple of bloggers who were saying something that really caught my attention and I pitched in. I thought, rethought, edited and finally pressed the “submit” button and was delighted to see how other strands of the thread came from what I had said - it gave me the confidence to do it more and then set up my own blog.
A post might be worthy of reading in its own right - with comments attached it can take on a life of its own.
But I do have some concerns. Sometimes I am attracted to a post that has loads of comments but when I look a good number of them are saying “great post”. I realise that this might be spam but if you have gone as far as saying “great post” how much more valuable would it be to say why you think so? I realise too that some commentors want their profile to be linked to a recognised blogger but really it would benefit their reputation so much more if they added something worthwhile to the discussion!
I also have a bit of an issue with anonymous commentors. I participate in several discussion groups in which people are obviously using pseudonyms and much of my community is made up of HR professionals I accept that this might have to be so. But I regularly see comments making a particular point and usually at odds with the original post which does not allow the author to take the discussion with the commentor further. To me that is a bit like ringing a bell and running away….!
So let’s hear it for commenting on blog posts you agree with /disagree with/want to learn more about to keep the conversation going.
….and please share your thoughts.
I am a fan of both Seth Godin and Tom Peters I was excited to see video links on Seth’s blog where they shared a platform. Watch the clip here where they talk about blogging from their perspectives.
I have been blogging now for coming up for 3 years . I have no idea how that time has passed so quickly. And that is one heck of a lot of posts. I look back on the earliest posts with fondness. That dipping my toe in the water was a big step for me but when I got into the habit ( I may have this wrong but I recall that you need to do something for 20 times for it to become a habit ) I found that I really enjoyed it. To sustain anything over a period of time you need to get something from doing it and Seth and Tom’s conversation got me thinking about what it does for me.
Seth suggests that one of the benefits is that by blogging you “force yourself to be part of the conversation”. Now this was a big step for me. I was very very cautious about “going public” on a number of levels not least of which was “what did I know?” but on reading other blogs I realised that this was an opportunity to share with others - and the whole being much much better than the sum of the parts.
As time has passed I realise that my style of writing is pretty much unchanged but my content is far more informed by what I have learned from other places - live, face to face, and online.
In the clip Tom Peters mentions that blogging has changed his “intellectual and emotional outlook” which I find very interesting. Intellectually blogging has challenged me more that I could have ever imagined. I find myself researching regularly and often - and not only for material for posts - which is quite a change for me. In the Honey and Mumford Learning Styles language I am strong activist learner and blogging has slowed me down some and encouraged me to reflect more which is a huge benefit to the way I work now. Emotionally I have never felt more connected to so many people. I have never been focussed on how many readers I have but always surprised and encouraged when someone takes the time to post a comment .
As a final comment on this I could never have imagined that Seth Godin, Tom Peters and I would be talking about the same thing. Actually - how would I have known? But blogging was the first step to opening up a whole new world to me and if you don’t blog yet I urge you to give it a try. And if you do - please share with me why you started and what keeps you going.
To think a year ago I did not know Twitter existed. Now it is as much of my daily life as my e-mail.
But so many people I speak to still tell me they are not interested in what Stephen Fry has to say or what somebody has had for breakfast. And I find myself launching into why Twitter has been so useful to my - both personally and for business reasons.
Speaking to my very good (pre Twitter) friend @bethedberg - a face to face networking phenomenon in her own right- yesterday made me think and I wanted to jot down my thoughts in a post so that I can look back at some point in the future and see how I was thinking in April 2009 ( I do this regularly with old blog posts. It is good practice and often makes me smile).
As I write this I have about 470 followers and I am following just over 500. That in itself is hard to imagine. Now in practice what I do is read the tweets that appear on Tweetdeck when I am online - so some of my twitter friends and I are never on at the same time. Some were friends and contacts pre Twitter through my blog and other online activities and I from time to time I will look a their tweet stream just like I check blog feeds. Finding Tweetdeck was a turning point for managing my groups. I have a few different reasons for online social networking and sorting friends into columns has made keeping up so much easier - whether it is to listen to the chat in HR/coaching circles, see what my teacher and educationalist friends are up to , get the heads up on new research and reporting on various journals or just finding out what is going on in people I care about’s lives.
My home is my workbase. When I am with clients I am in their space. One of my friends who also works from home called Twitter their coffee machine chat replacement - and I really get that. When I did work in an office the best connections I made were with random people from other departments as we made our coffee selection. The coffee is much better now ( loving my Nespresso machine!) but until Twitter the chance to bump into people had pretty much gone. Now I can be inspired by a 140 character comment and take that off in all sorts of directions. And I have been touched by the warmth of best wishes from my Twitter friends in celebrating good news and support when things are a little less sunny.
For business development it has been hugely beneficial. After delivering many in-house sessions I recently ran my first public speaking skills open programme in Edinburgh. I found a route to advertising this and one of the delegates through Twitter. I have met other coaches and speakers who are happy to share experiences - all great for my CPD. I can get views on business sectors I don’t know well from people on the inside. And I can find people who know the people I would like to get to know.
One of the other benefits is that I can find out about things that are happening in the wider community. The Red Nose Day Twitter feeds were fun. I follow a few charities’s tweets ( an more should be jumping in to raise awareness). I have an eclectic mix of big business “friends” from British Airways to ING and a smattering of politicians. It has given me a whole load of useful ( depending on your point of view) information to talk about at social gatherings when I actually see the people I am speaking to.
So what next then? Well I have already spoken to one group about online social networking and have been invited to do a similar talk to a group of businesswomen. That will be fun - hopefully for them too! And to ensure that I still benefit I have decided to be a bit more discriminating about who I follow. It is nice to be nice - I know - but my stream is in danger of getting cluttered with stuff that has no relevance to me and is, in reality, never likely to. I now that there might be some gem lurking that I will miss but I will take that chance.
I am looking forward to seeing how this develops in the next year and wondering what I will think about this post then!
A couple of days ago I published this post and Daniel of Cascade Couriers commented from a real life perspective
“I spent about 8 years somewhere in the middle and finally decided to go for the first group…I’ve never made so little money and been so happy:) Doing what you love is under-rated”
Take a look at his new blog - there is more to couriering than I thought!]
http://www.cascadecouriers.blogspot.com/
Rosie Sherry at Talent Social has put together a blog page for UK based HR bloggers - and given me credit in the footer despite the fact that she has done all the hard work! Thanks Rosie!
Check it out - really good stuff do dip into there
http://blogs.talentsocial.com/
