There is one thing that consistently drives me nuts about reading TypePad blogs: I can’t easily follow the conversation. There’s only one way to follow comments on most TypePad blogs (if you know something I’ve missed, please let me know), and that’s to add a single post’s comment feed to my RSS reader.
This is all right for a single post, but oh my, it gets tedious if I’m interested in more than one. It keeps me from being heavily involved in blogs I might otherwise be following obsessively—because I’m not just interested in the posts. I’m interested in the conversation.
When I leave a comment, I want to know if anyone’s responded to it. I want to know if other comments reference it. I want to know what other people think, independent of my opinion. If it’s not easy to follow up on these things, I won’t bother. I’m not going to bookmark that post and check back every few days. That’s too much trouble. And you know what? After awhile, clicking through to add per-post RSS feeds gets old.
Eventually, I notice that it affects my interest in commenting.
I actually notice myself feeling discouraged from leaving comments when I know I can’t track responses effortlessly, especially if the comment itself is a very, very tiny part of my day.
I’ve deconstructed this process for myself, and I recognize it when it happens. But your users might not. How many of them are like me? How many of them become measurably more invested in a site when they can participate in the discussion?
How much more involved would they be in the things you say… if you made it easy for them?
My vanilla (paid) typepad blog has no comment feed, but Anne McCrossan's has. Scroll all the way down. I tested it with an older post of hers and my news feeder shows all comments.
Under "Subscribe", top left, there's a "comments RSS" link. Let me know if you notice anything a-wry with it -- I changed it when I started using Disqus and don't have a lot of feedback on how it works yet, other than my own experimentation. ^_^
I hear tell that there's a way to enable an all-comments RSS feed with TypePad, but it sounded hacky (and since I'm not very familiar with TypePad, I couldn't tell how easy it might be to implement). I didn't find anything that suggested there was a way to hit a checkbox and have follow-up comments emailed to you. (That's one of the reasons I like Disqus -- it takes care of that.)
Conversation, Anyone?
by Megan M. on April 7, 2009 · View Comments (Blog) | email me
There is one thing that consistently drives me nuts about reading TypePad blogs: I can’t easily follow the conversation. There’s only one way to follow comments on most TypePad blogs (if you know something I’ve missed, please let me know), and that’s to add a single post’s comment feed to my RSS reader.
This is all right for a single post, but oh my, it gets tedious if I’m interested in more than one. It keeps me from being heavily involved in blogs I might otherwise be following obsessively—because I’m not just interested in the posts. I’m interested in the conversation.
When I leave a comment, I want to know if anyone’s responded to it. I want to know if other comments reference it. I want to know what other people think, independent of my opinion. If it’s not easy to follow up on these things, I won’t bother. I’m not going to bookmark that post and check back every few days. That’s too much trouble. And you know what? After awhile, clicking through to add per-post RSS feeds gets old.
Eventually, I notice that it affects my interest in commenting.
I actually notice myself feeling discouraged from leaving comments when I know I can’t track responses effortlessly, especially if the comment itself is a very, very tiny part of my day.
I’ve deconstructed this process for myself, and I recognize it when it happens. But your users might not. How many of them are like me? How many of them become measurably more invested in a site when they can participate in the discussion?
How much more involved would they be in the things you say… if you made it easy for them?
Tagged as: blogging, comments, conversation, typepad