Heard of them ? Probably not - but go back several years and many US youth soccer teams had heard about this small town in Wokingham, Berkshire, England and the great girls team that they had. Some wanted to come over and play them, others wanted to know if they were planning a tour of the US so they could play them, others sent over pins and patches from their club.
How did this happen ?
My daughter has been playing footy from a very early age - and still does. I started a website for the team so that I could get them some publicity - and also learn about using the Internet and creating and running websites. This was in the earlier days of the Internet - so sites still had 'under construction' gifs, guestbooks were popular, marquee tags could often be found and there was no concept of 'Liking' a page
I connected with a lot of teams by signing the guestbook, made connections with teams that signed mine and my site became quite popular. It was helped that it was an English girls footy team - girls soccer is huge in the US but not so much the UK so it was pretty easy to stand out and the US teams loved having an English visitor on the site. And so the benefits I outlined at the start of the post came along - patches and pins in the post and invitations to play.
So I have carried on with this behaviour, but now with testing blogs rather than footy sites.
I don't comment on every blog I read but try to do so on a regular basis. Why ?
- It helps make connections.
- The author of the blog usually appreciates it and it encourages them to carry on writing
- It's an opportunity to think - did the blog make you think ? Do you agree with everything in the post ? Could you play the Devils Advocate ?
- Conversely, if the blog does not make you think and you never have any comment to make about it, why are you reading it ?
Captchas can make leaving a comment a real pain but is that the main reason people don't comment ? Do you bother leaving comments ? If you don't, then please leave a comment explaining why :)
As an exercise, try leaving one comment a week. If you cant, then reflect on why not, does it mean the blogs you read are not making you think enough ?
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6 comments:
Sometimes I don't have any smart comment to do, besides "great post!" so that's why I don't comment. But you are right, we should start comment on the blogs, to build a community much more live and richer.
Thanks for the comment !
:)
Agreed, it can be hard to think of more than just "great post" but you can think about *why* it was a great post. Again, I'm not suggesting you do this for every blog you visit, but doing it occasionally can be a win-win, it makes you think and it gives the blogger some feedback
I appreciate every comment I get on my blog posts. I often comment on blog posts that I read although I read blogs infrequently nowadays. Just lack of time prevents me from reading more. Sometimes I wish I could keep track of all the places where I have commented. You never know when a shared thought will spark a new idea.
I find commenting on blogs, and also via Twitter, a great way of connecting and remaining connected to the testing community.
From a bloggers perspective it's also great to get comments on your blog, it proves people are reading it and I often find that people's comment give me more ideas for future articles, or enhancements to the post that they've commented on.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your post and your blog. I'll try to take inspiration from you to at least leave some comments. I did try to take inspiration from you to get blogging more myself a good while ago but have not managed to do so. This should be a more achievable step.
Glenn
The encouragement to post on blogs more often is appreciated. I find a lot of my "conversation" occurs in Twitter in the open, but often a blog post is the impetus and I'm going to take the challenge to comment more regularly on the blogs I read.
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