Commenter Analysis
Hello all and welcome to my commenter analysis. My first blog post was 5/20/2018 so my blog is officially 8 months & 4 days old. After struggling a bit with community, I decided to try to devise a better way to connect and track my commenters.
COMMENTOR ANALYSIS
Method
To get a understanding of my commenters, I exported all my comments to excel. Then deleted all of my own comments as well as all of the trackbacks, leaving only visitor comments. Next I counted the number of comments for each visitors and read through them in a effort to discern how they originally found my blog. I labeled each visitor as either an organic, a responder, or a follower. An organic would be someone who came upon my blog by search engine. A responder is someone who found my site in a meme or event post. A follower is someone that comes to my blog a lot and especially to posts that aren’t linked outside my website.
Stats
Total Comments: 164
Total Commenters: 85
Organic Commenters: 23
Responder Commenters: 47
Follower Commenters: 15
Commenters By The Numbers
Commenters with 7 or more comments: 3
Commenters with 5 or 6 comments: 4
Commenters with 3 or 4 Comments: 8
Commenters with 2 comments: 16
Commenters with 1 comment: 54
My Gameplan
My problem with this is that way more than half of all my commenters have come by once but haven’t returned. I always reply to comments and try to reciprocate as well so I will need to do something more to attract long term patronage to my blog. One thing I have already finished was updating my graphics and tweaking my overall theme. The next step is going to be visiting all of the commenters on my spreadsheet and catch up on their blog. I’m hoping to finish this by the end of the month. I find it super convenient to have a spreadsheet of commenters because I can just open it and pick up where I left off. The last step (so far) is to re-export the commenters every month. I can use the new spreadsheet to gage my progress and as a way to decide which blogs to focus on for the next 30 days.
Books In Bloom
I'm an avid reader and love most all books, but my favorite genres tend to be mystery, adventure, science fiction and classics. Genres I tend to shy away from include romance, contemporary fiction and chick lit. If I’m not actually reading books, I’m probably at work shelving them at my local library.
7 Comments
Kay
That’s interesting. I have never attempted to analyze my comments, but I do know that I have a small number of commenters who comment on almost everything I post, a larger number of commenters who occasionally comment, and then more who have popped in once or twice. I know that when I started blogging, I read an article that said you should always answer every comment, which I do, at least for the first comment a day, not necessarily if people keep answering me back. I don’t know if you do that, but if you don’t and you’re trying to attract more commenters, that’s one thing you can do. Another thing to do is comment a lot on other people’s blogs. I did that for a while, but now I usually only do it when I have something to say (but with some people I comment on everything they write, as they do for me).
Kay recently posted…Review 1308: Notes from a Small Island
Books In Bloom
These are great tips and things I’ve also been working on. I don’t have too much time to devote to commenting on others but I want to make time.
Jillian
Ah. See, this post is evidence of the “T” in your INTJ. 😀 My sister is all about a spreadsheet! I, however, am the “aim and hope something hits while I wander off reading Tennyson” type.
* My problem with this is that way more than half of all my commenters have come by once but haven’t returned. I always reply to comments and try to reciprocate as well so I will need to do something more to attract long term patronage to my blog.*
Okay, so I’m guessing your problem is lack of a trusty comment notification system. On a wordpress.com site, we get auto notification on the site itself as soon as the blogger returns a comment (or anyone else offers input) so conversations can be ongoing in real time. You have a “notify me of follow up comments by email” tick box, which isn’t the same at all, though I believe that’s all blogger has. So if someone wants to follow a conversation, they have to 1) notice that tick box 2) remember to click it 3) hope the email doesn’t go to spam 4) not mind having their inbox potentially filled 5) go through extra steps to get back to the conversation or get the email. (On wordpress.com, you don’t even have to go back to the blog. You can respond in the notification bar.)
All of which can work, but makes commenting far less “real time,” if that makes sense.
And on top of that, I’ve tested your comment notification system a couple times now, and I never get an email. I checked my SPAM folder, and nothing. So possibly people have tried to follow a thread here, and then have forgotten all about it, assuming no one has answered them because they receive no notification.
That right there’s your problem, m’am!
*dips hat*
Books In Bloom
Hehe, very true. These systems can be very fickle. I do have my wordpress acct on an old email, so maybe I’ll try the check box…if I remember. I do have the wordpress app, but I’m not sure how many of those notifications come through… I haven’t see many. Thanks so much for commenting. I’ll look into these ideas for sure. 🙂
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Jillian
As a spreadsheet woman, I thought you might find this free 2019 spreadsheet on books exciting. It confuses me, but I assume it would make sense to you. 🙂
https://readervoracious.com/2018/11/28/2019-spreadsheet-template/
Books In Bloom
Woooww. I will check it out. Thanks for thinking of me. 😀