Brilliant hospital blog + no comments = ?

July 26, 2011 • By Dan Hinmon, Principal

flickr: Espen Klem

Have you written a brilliant blog post, posted it to your website with great anticipation and waited breathlessly for responses to come pouring in, only to be disappointed by a lack of comments?

One of our clients recently expressed her fear that no one cared about her blog because she didn’t receive comments.

Well-known social media pioneer, writer, prolific tweeter and popular speaker Guy Kawasaki runs the Alltop website. A couple of weeks ago I discovered a fascinating infographic showing “the path to building trust online.”

The graphic itself is a simple and powerful lesson, but what caught my attention was the number of views and responses to the post.

Views: 6,293
Likes: 0
Tweets: 70
+1: 9
LinkedIn: 38
Comments: 1

What does it mean that only 1 of 6,293 viewers commented? Did only one person find the infographic useful? Why was the article tweeted 70 times, yet received just one comment?

So often, it’s just a matter of effort. It’s so much easier to click the tweet icon and press send – many tweet buttons don’t even allow you to edit your tweet – than it is to log in, develop a well-thought-out comment and press submit.

Three simple lessons

• First, make sure your blog format includes these share buttons in a prominent location so your readers can easily pass along your content to their social media networks. We’ve written about that, including some handy details, in an earlier blogpost.
• Second, don’t worry about comments. In today’s hectic world, most readers are skimming your content. And although they may be inspired or motivated by your message, they’re simply not going to take time to comment.
• Third, keep blogging. Comments or not, if you are writing useful and interesting blogposts your audience will grow. Blogging is still one of the best online tools for building a close community.

Tags: Alltop, Guy Kawasaki, infographic