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A Blog without Comments is Social Media without the Social
I’ve been a long time subscriber of GarryConn.com who blogs about making money online, blogging, and affiliate marketing and other similar topics. Today he announced that he is going to stop accepting comments on his blog.
Sure it’s his blog, he can do whatever he please with it – but a blog that doesn’t accept comments is a blog that doesn’t believe in ‘social media‘. It ceases to become a blog and starts to just become a one man rant.
I personally find this to be a disconnect from what the whole purpose behind blogging is. Blogging is about building a community and sharing insights with one another.
I bet if you asked any of the other A-List bloggers out there how important they think their commenters are they will all agree that they are extremely important to their success.
The web is becoming more and more social everyday. I myself am trying to bring more and more social interaction into my blog by using Disqus and Backtype plugins, as well as integrating twitter as often as possible.
A blogger who doesn’t understand or get the ‘social’ aspect of blogging, isn’t a professional blogger at all.
Garry Conn’s current alexa rank is 32,000 and he has a google PR of 4, I currently hover around 200,000 for alexa, and 3 for PR. Sure he has more clout where it comes to his blog’s rankings. I’d like to see what happens in the next 3-5 months. I’ll be sure to check back and do an update. I would even suggest that removing comments from his blog could kill his blog altogether.
If you remember Kumiko’s Cashquests – she removed commenting, and then gave up blogging and sold her blog a couple months later. (i’m happy to say I now have a much higher Alexa rank than Cashquests which used to be in the top 100,000 – not that I’m gloating -lol).
One thing I can be sure of -as long There’s a blog in MY Soup this blog will Always have open comments.
What do you think? Will removing Comments kill his blog?
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Patrick Curl is a professional Internet Marketer, Social Marketer, Seo Expert, Blogger, and Network Marketer. He loves to be his own boss, teach others to be self-wealthy, and get paid to do what he loves, which is blog. 
Steve Pavlina is on your BlogRoll and he stopped allowing comments on his blog too http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/blog-c... – This was back in 2005. He had many of the same reasons as GarryConn for doing so. Here it is 2009 and Steve's blog is still very much in existence. So why not rant about him too? I'm just confused why Garry is being so criticized for this (not just by you) when other successful bloggers have done the same thing? Although, I'm sure Steve Pavlina had his share of criticism too. I believe he now has a forum for his readers to be able to voice themselves about his posts.
I also came across this post from 2006: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06...
Seth Godin also doesn't accept comments. I'm not sure if that is still the case now or not.
But why does it matter if some bloggers accept comments and other bloggers do not? I think bloggers should run their blog(s) however they see fit and in whatever fashion works for their particular lives and schedules. Managing comments can become a real time suck and keep a blogger from writing posts. Some bloggers may thrive on the comments though. To each his own. I guess it depends on their workload and how many blogs they are running and how much traffic the blog gets. It can be a lot to keep up with. Gee……maybe he wants some family time with his wife and kids. Give Garry a break
It's not like he is doing something truly strange that has never been done before and even if he was…..so what?
Lynn – My point is that blogs are two way communications between everyday readers of the blog and the blogebrity that they're reading. Its a way to become closer to your readers. By taking that away you get rid of the closeness. A blog can begin to become empty and shallow. If you have a forum to go along with it, well that would help open your website back up, but with the social web – more and more blogs / social media websites are about being open, not closed.
Closing comments will in the end close the number of people who partake in his blog. I for one have stopped reading his blog, not only because of the commenting, (that was the last straw), but also because of the lackluster content. The quality of posts have gone down substantially.
The thing that sets Steve Pavlina and Seth Godin apart from the rest as far as commenting – is that each blog post that they write is extremely long, extremely full of content, and gets a ton of shares.
If you're gonna remove user interaction from your blog you better damn be sure that you have the super caliber content that nobody else can deliver, or like my blog post said, you'll just end up a has-been like Kumiko's cashquests was, or any other great blogs that have fallen apart for other reasons.
In the end it all comes down to two things – social / user action OR stellar content, you need at least one of those two things to be successful, and I fear GarryConn.com in closing comments has cancelled the first one, and I don't know if his content can keep up.
I guess it is a personal choice. Garry Conn has enough good information for his blogs to sustain. I do not think it will become a rant without the commenting, reading his blog i cannot see any ranting, he is just giving good how to information and tools to use. Sometimes you need to free up some things to manage your time better. This is what he has done. It may just work for him.
As a Social Media fanatic – I'm fanatical (excuse the pun) about open communication and commenting is about open lines of communication.
^ it’s his blog, he can do whatever he please with it .
Hey I like YOU. I think he went out like a sucker. I tried to reach out to him a few times and it's no use. Taking your comments off it's the definition of lame. What does Seth Steve and Gary have in common ? They all think they are way bigger then they are and sadly many people back em up. Oh well less comments for them is more for US
Nice site
Stumble and added the link to my most recent post.
Thanks for the great post. It reminds me that I have to bring more structure in to my blogging. Your blog is very interesting. Please let me know how to go for your rss blog.
regards
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