People Are Commenting On Your Blog Posts - On Other Websites

March 19, 2008 | By Jason Kaneshiro | Filed Under Features

Imagine this scenario:

You write a post on your blog.
Someone submits your blog post to a link-sharing site like Digg, StumbleUpon, or FriendFeed.
Tons of people comment on that link on Digg, Mixx, or FriendFeed, and an interesting conversation ensues independent of your blog.
Meanwhile, your blog proper has: 0 comments.

Does this bother you as a blogger? How about as a user?

Most predictably, some bloggers feel that this conversation-relocation is detrimental to the blog itself. Comments are part of the reason why readers visit your blog, and moving the comments might mean a drop in traffic. People may misjudge the popularity of your blog if it appears to have no comments.

The contrary opinion is that the blogger has no ownership of the conversation. For example, after you watch a movie, people leave the theater and go to other places to talk about the movie. There is no sanity in requesting the conversation about the movie stay at movie theater.

What’s my take? The above scenario doesn’t bother me. Considering my blog as one destination that everyone must visit sounds decidedly old-fashioned. For a blogger to say that all comments should be retained at the original blog sounds like something a newspaper website would say. It stems from that same provincialism that discourages linking to other websites, or splitting articles into ten pieces in order to retain traffic.

So how do you feel about the above scenario? If it concerns you, can you suggest any possible solutions?

Digg it

About the author: Jason Kaneshiro is a relative "newbie" blogger and the author of Webomatica, covering technology, movies, and music. He lives in the Bay Area and works in web / instructional design in San Francisco.

Comments

18 Responses to “People Are Commenting On Your Blog Posts - On Other Websites”

Robert on March 19th, 2008 8:36 pm

Can we talk about this somewhere else?
LSKcrochet on March 19th, 2008 8:45 pm

I never considered this before. I guess if we start leaving open ended questions on our post that compels the reader to respond back to you on an idividual basis then this may not be much of a problem.
http://lskcrochet.blogspot.com/
Evan Meagher on March 19th, 2008 9:00 pm

I understand why some might be upset about it, but I’d be more apt to be happy that people are discussing my content at all. Talk elsewhere is better than no talk at all, right?

And there’s nothing stopping you from joining the discussion on digg, Mixx, etc. If people notice the author commenting alongside them, they might be more apt to look further into your site and brand.
YuppiePunk World HQ on March 19th, 2008 9:13 pm

I think its fun when people talk about posts from my site on another — its like being a fly on the wall. People will say different things in their own community or forum than they will say on your blog.

And really, isn’t that the ultimate point anyway — to spur thought? If people are talking at the water cooler the next day about something you wrote, that’s a compliment. And ultimately, if what you do is valuable, the readers will come back.
Jason on March 19th, 2008 10:35 pm

Robert, that’s a good one :)

It’s good hear that others are okay with this, and looking at the bigger picture of any discussion is better than none at all, and to encourage conversation, wherever it may be.
ian in hamburg on March 19th, 2008 11:15 pm

Two strategies for steering some chatter back your way if that’s your goal would be to dive into the conversation taking place elsewhere or to write a new post pointing out how much reaction the post did receive, with links for readers who may have missed it.
spostareduro on March 20th, 2008 3:46 am

Robert: Lmao *-)
andymurd on March 20th, 2008 4:40 am

Some good points there, Jason. I use Google Alerts to send me a daily email whenever anyone mentions my blog or my nickname which means I can at least see what has been said.
I wonder if it would be practical to put together an RSS feed of comments from other blogs/social networks that could be displayed below the comments on an article on my blog. Might be worth a try.
Phil on March 20th, 2008 7:47 am

How would you even track comments about your blog on another site, like Digg? I’m pretty confident I’ve never been “dugg,” but I would like to know how to find out. There are so many social media services now that there should be an easy way to track links to your content across all of them. Smells like a job for a WordPress plugin.

Also, if we have FriendFeed, why don’t we have a “CommentFeed” that consolidates all of the comments from Digg etc. into one site? What’s wrong with the web2.0 marketplace?! :)
Sarah on March 20th, 2008 8:08 am

I was just thinking about this yesterday…I wish there was a way to incorporate the FriendFeed/twitter activity into your blog…the conversation has moved elsewhere for sure.
Phil on March 20th, 2008 10:21 am

Assuming there’s an RSS feed for the data you want, it would be fairly straightforward to integrate that into your blog. Not “easy” if you’re not a programmer, but straightforward for a codemonkey.

The assumption about RSS feeds may be a big one. I haven’t signed up for FeedFriend or Twitter yet, so I don’t know enough about how they work off the top of my head.

If there aren’t feeds, then the difficulty goes way up as you have to dig into each tool’s API.
WALEG on March 20th, 2008 11:18 am

The worst thing is when someone just copy your work and publish it as it is without even a referring link… However if a link to your site is mentioned, that could be helpful if you are getting lots of comments, it will ease the load on your server ;)!
Huckle on March 20th, 2008 3:03 pm

I’ve not done it myself, but if it really bothers you could just include the RSS feed of the comments from the networking/sharing site like stumbleupon using php magic. For instance, the stumble comments for this page can be found at http://www.stumbleupon.com/reviews.php?url=http://www.blogherald.com/2008/03/19/people-are-commenting-on-your-blog-posts-on-other-websites/ .
Jason on March 20th, 2008 5:12 pm

A plug in would be one solution. The practicality of logging in to every site that might have a conversation about you quickly gets impractical when you consider how many social sites there are out there.

Here are some additional thoughts in a post on ReadWriteWeb.
Anne Helmond on March 21st, 2008 2:21 am

One of my favorite topics that can’t deserve enough attention. Here are some additional thoughts I previously wrote for the Blog Herald:

Commenting Issues in the Blogosphere
Where Do You Leave Your Comments?
David Bradley on March 21st, 2008 10:04 am

Keep track of those offsite discussions, anything truly interesting that arises can then be used as fodder for a follow-up post, potentially win-win.

db
Jeremy Steele on March 21st, 2008 10:28 am

Why be upset about it? If someone is talking about your blog it’s a good thing, and I think it is actually better if they discuss it elsewhere as it can help convince new visitors to come take a look.
Broccoletto on March 23rd, 2008 12:31 pm

I guess it would bother me a bit but it would be wrong to let it bother me :)
Having said this, in the past I wrote some songs that got picked up by local bands, I now gave up playing while these people are playing fairly big stages with one of the song being their war horse.
I get no credit most of the time but it’s still good to hear the song, hey it’s better that than a dead song.

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