5 Etiquettes to Keep Among Bloggers
I’ve been a blogger for over a month now. A month and 10 days to be exact, and during this time, I’ve been through many other blogs, and met some bloggers that I liked particularly. I’d like to commend some of my fellow bloggers for their support and kindness, as well as courteous manners, and in respect to that, I decided to write a blog about etiquette among bloggers. I view an online community as a legitimate community, despite what some may think, and I always treat everybody as human beings, as I would in the non-cyber world, and I expect to be treated back that way.
So here is a list that I came up with :
- When somebody leaves you comments, reply to them, regardless of whether they are subscribed or not.
Blogs are the ultimate of communication and information exchange among regular people. Opinions no longer have to be transferred through massive controlled medium such as news sites or public agency sites. And it is very important that blog owners respond to their blog comments (unless the comment is a useless joke of some sort). It makes them feel good when they return, and it makes you appear as more human. Interaction and sharing is the whole point of blogging. Jimmy Reimer is very good with this on his blog. He has a lot of informative and out-of-the-box ideas that always spark good discussions! I try to do the same all the time. Basically put it this way - nearly 50% of the comments should be the owner’s comments, unless the size of the blog is too large to handle. - Exchange links among bloggers, and give back links if you can.
Of course, if your blog is like John Chow’s blog, you couldn’t possibly agree to all the link exchanges because there are probably about 1,500 or more out there. But if you are a starting blogger like myself, be courteous enough to offer linkbacks, and give the favour back if somebody else does it for you. I have a link exchange coming up with Career Ramblings. Also, I had Paul Butler and Lemuel Jopio add my blog to their blogrolls before I even asked them to, so I returned the favour and they are on my sidebar. My very first link exchange was with Brendon Swanson’s blog titled The Other Hand. - Keep the post frequency regular.
This is not only an etiquette issue but also a blog traffic issue. If you update every day for a week and then go dead for 3 days, people will be disappointed as they return, and your subscription/traffic will reduce. I like the feeling of visiting blogs each day and seeing something new as the top post. - If a fellow blogger took the trouble to write comments on your blog, give them back the favour.
They took their time to read your posts, and respond to it. Try to do your best to make the time to make at least one comment on the other person’s blog. The mutual respect will strengthen your relationship, and generate more activity and traffic for both of you. Robb DeVore commented on several of my posts (he’s very very busy though, hasn’t showed up in a while) so I went back to his blog and showed some support, and even posted a response article to his original article regarding customer service!!! - Don’t be shy to put links and references to other people’s posts, and if they do it for you, give them the favour back.
John Chow recently published a great post about his love for the bloggers community, and my post was linked there as well. I’ve been talking about him on my posts here and there, not to mention put his widget on my blog, so he’s returning me the favour. And did you also notice, I have links to many blogs in this post as well? This is my way of returning the support I received.
Remember - Karma. What goes around comes around. To grow in a community you need to be an active part of the community and it applies to online communities. This is a social network that helps you grow and spread your ideas, and also absorb that of others!
Its all about consideration and effort..
it surprises me how many people think they are not human when they get online.. its as if they treat everyone else like machines but that is not the case.
I’m starting a blog too and I hope I can be this nice!!
It’s all about being human. Let me know when your new blog is up.
You’re 100% right Jeff! It’s the same here as it is in the real world. It’s going to be even more important here eventually because of all the spam and scamming. You’ll need connections that have integrity of honesty.
Who’s going to believe a hard pushed sales pitch once the internet reaches serious mass? When the majority become tolerant to those long sales pages with all the yellow highlighting, you’re going to need the recommendation and link from a trustworthy “human being”. But that ’s probably a ways away.
Thank you for mentioning me. I was planning on doing a review of your site even before I saw this. You beat me to it. In that case I’ll have to do one better for you! We’ll see how awesome the Top Blogger Roll Call gets!
Oh.. and thanks for the threaded comments plugin. you know, when someone is able to just leave me tips like that right in the comments, it’s an amazing time saver. I must have saved 20 minutes if I had to do the search myself. I appreciate that.
A competition to do better reviews for each other is one hell of a good competition! good stuff. That’s not my official review on you thought, this is more of a generic overview of my good visitors.. A full review is on its way.
Threaded Comments - It’s a great plugin, Look at how I use it. I got the idea originally from John Chow. Install it. Although, you might want to modify your comments.php file with the tabindex=”" attributes so that when people use the Tab key it shifts between fields properly. That’s one thing that the original auther hasn’t covered yet.. unless he made an upgrade.
Jeff-
I appreciate the article and comments, both. There’s no need for me to go on about how right it is to be generous with link exchanges and trackbacks, but rather, how important it is in a marketing sense. I’ve had a blog for quite sometime now, but it has only been since January that I’ve increased my readership from virtually zero for most of my blog’s life to over one-thousand in January and growing in February, most certainly in part to my link exchanging. The quality of my visitors is up as well.
J.R.-
You’ve hit on a topic close to home for me. I’m in the process of writing a piece on referral theory for the Journal of Services Marketing. The way that modern day search engines utilize credibility and content has bled onto the scene of social marketing and the optimization thereof. That’s a fantastic observation.
Well right now my RSS readership has spiked up to 55, which is a record for me, and it’s a continuing effort to keep things up, and be personal with as many as I can.
Hey Jeff,
Great post. Everything written in it is so true. I seen the () in the part mentioned about me, and yes, I have been pretty busy, but I am not able to relax a little more and spend some more time writing so I will be updating my blog daily as well. It does help in return visitors. and look, I’m commenting again
Robb
Haha life is busy Robb, I understand.. I barely find the time to keep this blog up but it’s worth it at the end I think.
Good to see you’re back and alive!!! Cheers.
Jeff,
I echo everyone here, you hit the bulls eye sort of speak. When someone contacts you, it’s only polite to respond. I have contacted many people as we’ve started out, but only a few respond. You soon see who the network of bloggers are that you can count on for help or guidance. Plus, we are all here to be successful in each of our ventures (getting information out there, helping others, or making money while helping others).
You have a great foundation and you know what works. It’s all about consistency, that’s one of my biggest challenges but we work on what we are not strong in.
Thanks for mentioning CR and yes, we are writing a post as we speak including you and others that have helped us in the process. Best of luck!
I saw your review about my site included in your recent post!!
Thank you I appreciate that. It’s all about cooperation and helping people with a good heart.
damn
i dont know what stack overflow is
but you have got a problem with it
im using some new internet explorer on my moms computer (visiting home for the week) and anytime i try to load a page on your site it makes me click through 1-7 pop-ups that say stack overflow problem ____
i dont know what that is
but its annoying
so i figured you would want to know you have a problem with something in the design of your blog man
I figured out which plugin was causing it - it was myAvatars. I temporarily disabled it until I can find a solution.
I practice #1, 2, 4, and 5 with utmost priority. Still work on #3.
There is such a strong correlation between frequency of posts and traffic. They are married and never getting a divorce!!!