As engagement and sharing on Twitter, Facebook and other social tools continues to increase, many bloggers are noticing a sharp decrease in comments on their blogs.  Of course, that doesn’t mean that interest is declining.  RSS and email subscriptions, site traffic and social sharing may all be continuing to increase.  These are tracked through a variety of tools and even popular commenting system Disqus scours social networks to find blog posts being shared and displays those as “interactions”.

Increasingly bloggers are concerned that even though they know that their posts are being shared through other channels, that their communities still aren’t commenting on their posts.  It’s a completely understandable feeling.  You work hard at putting together a thought or position, flesh it out, find an engaging photo or video to help enhance your point and then publish it to the world.  A comment makes us feel good and/or helps to extend the post itself.  Sometimes the comments are even better than the post.  So, when a blogger begins noticing a decrease of comments on their blog, it can be depressing.  It can cause bloggers to start rethinking their content strategy and possibly even considering whether or not they should continue blogging.

Every time I’ve been asked whether or not a blogger should be discouraged by a decrease in comments, I immediately ask them whether or not they’ve looked at the sharing of their post through other channels and what the feedback from those channels are.  Usually they tell me that their seeing their content being shared online but they still wish they were getting the comments on their blog.

I’ve been thinking about this often.  Admittedly, I comment a lot less than I used but I share tons more now.  Google Reader trends tell me that I share around 30 articles per day through there.  I also regularly share tons more through Twitter and Facebook throughout the day.  But, I probably comment on about 75% less blogs than a year or so ago.  I know, I need to improve on that.

However, as I’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been considering whether or not the decline in commenting is actually a bad thing.  If you stop by and comment on a blog, you may extend that conversation and/or let that blogger know that you appreciate their work.  Both are great.  Consider though that the conversation will only be seen by that community which is limited by the number of subscribers and the number of visitors to that blog.  But, if you share that blog post with your community on Google Reader, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn, then you’re promoting that content to your social graph thus extending the total overall reach of that post.  By sharing that post with your social graph, it will extend the number of eyes that may be seeing that blog for the very first time.  Or, if they’ve ignored other content from that blog, it may be that post that pulls them in and triggers them to subscribe or share it with their networks thus continuing to grow the overall subscriber base and reach of the blog.

You may think that I’m suggesting that comments are dead but I’m not.  I love comments as much as the next blogger.  I appreciate everyone that takes the time out to share their thoughts.  I also value everyone that shares my content with their social graphs because it helps to get my content out to more people.

It’s just something I’ve been debating in my own head lately so I figured I’d spill it out into a blog post and see what you had to say and where you may choose to say it.  So, what are your thoughts?  Do you prefer comments, social sharing or a combination of both as a measure of the engagement on your blog?

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Photo Credit: premasagar

• You leave your house and stop at the gas station.  Since you’re paying with credit card you never go inside the store and therefore never have an interaction with the clerk.
• Next, you stop at the bank to deposit a couple checks, check your balance and withdraw some cash.  You do this all from the ATM.  Alas, no interaction.
• You run across the street to the grocery store.  You go inside and grab one of the personal scanners.  As you walk through the store you scan your items and bag them.  You head over to the meat counter, punch your order into the touchscreen and a few minutes later grab your turkey and cheese from a slot where they placed the items when the computerized system called your number.  When you’re done shopping you head to self-checkout, dock your personal scanner, swipe your credit card and are done.  No need to have personal interaction.
• You plan on staying in tonight so, while still at the grocery store, you head over to the Redbox movie vending machines.  Again, a swipe of your credit card and out pops this week’s 2 new releases that you really wanted to see.  Catching on yet?  Yep, no personal interaction.
• When you get out to your car you remember that you brought that pesky bag of coins that have been laying around the house.  You head back into the grocery store and hit up the Coinstar machine.  Dump in your coins, choose to receive an Amazon gift card, and off you go.
• Next stop, recycling some bottles from the Sunday football routine.  Nope, no need for personal interaction here either.  Pop your bottles in, grab your receipt and off you go.  You’ll save them for the next time you run through self-checkout at the grocery store.
• You remember that you need some cleaning supplies, some pet food and a few other things.  Time to hit up Walmart.  The biggest retailer in the entire world.  Surely you’ll have some personal interaction here right?  Nope.  You grab your items, head to self-checkout, sign the little digital reader and off you go.
• After a tiring couple hours you head home, log into Amazon and buy a couple books you’ve been really wanting with that gift card you got from Coinstar.

In that scenario there was no need for any personal interaction yet you were very productive and probably spent the entire morning running around.  While this is great from a productivity standpoint, is it hurting the chances for us to have meaningful face-to-face interactions?  I think so.  Furthermore, this isn’t even taking into consideration what these technologies are doing by reducing the workforce, increasing the bottom line of these corporations, and the many other factors that come into play with implementations of more and more advanced technologies into the consumer space.  Granted, I prefer to use these technologies as they allow me to stay highly productive and move at my speed, not the speed of others around me.  But, it is interesting to look at from a higher level, more global standpoint.

This is another reason why I am in love with social media.  What I didn’t add to the above schedule is that after all that, you come home, log into Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and GTalk and have 50+ meaningful conversations with friends from all over the world.  However, there is something about face-to-face interaction that is very important.  It is one of the things I enjoy the most about going to conferences, meetups and other networking events.  There are some things that can only be gotten from face-to-face interactions.  Maybe that is one of the reasons why I enjoy this social space so much….because it is social and there are less and less opportunities for me to have meaningful face-to-face discussions with the gas clerk, sales rep, movie store employee, etc.

What’s say you?

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Photo by: Litandmore