In recent months, things have been very frustrating in regards to the state of my blog. The past few episodic and editorial posts received no comments at all, which adds to the frustration. If you have been following me on Twitter, the lack of comments has been my torn in my back for the past few months. Rather than keep my frustrations in, I want to share them. Also, I want to ask for your suggestions on how to motivate readers to comment on my posts.
In the past, while my blog has ups and downs in terms of comments, I do read them. I find comments more valuable than likes as it gives me the indication that the person read my post. Comments adds value to the content I create. They give me different perspectives on the topics that I cover in editorials or thoughts about an episode or a series.
It’s frustrating when I put in a lot of effort in creating content and the comments never come. Sure, I receive a handful of likes, but in my opinion, likes don’t really add much value to the posts I write. People can simply leave likes without reading the content. This is one of the reasons I want to possibly disable likes as a way to encourage more commenting.
Either way, when I compare my blog to other blogs, who have no problems receiving comments, it’s obvious why I’m very frustrated. This just adds more to the self-doubt. This makes me believe that my content isn’t good enough because people aren’t leaving comments. Compared to last year at the same time, the situation is even worse as I only received 70 comments opposed to around 94 last year.
I have to admit that complaining about this issue isn’t going to help in the long run. I’m at my breaking point of possibly burning out mostly because of this issue. In the end, I need to make drastic changes and improvements. Is the quality of my content the reason I’m not receiving any comments? Or is it that I need to step up my efforts with social media as seen with the declining/stagnating Twitter follower count? There are different areas I am willing to look at so I can possibly resolve this issue. Feel free to share constructive advice in the comments on which areas I should improve on to resolve this issue.
At the end of the day, I’m at the risk of burning out over this issue alone. This is frustrating since I enjoy sharing my thoughts about anime, manga and video games. I know there are different reasons why people eventually give up on blogging. This can range from the lack of passion or motivation to not having enough time.
To me, social interaction, hence comments are very important me. This is a reason I’m able to continue blogging for more than 10 years. I just don’t want to see my efforts in creating great content go to waste. There is plenty of content I have planned that I want to cover in the future. However, I feel that I won’t be able to do so unless I resolve this issue.
With that, if you are an anime blogger, have you experience the same feelings? Also feel free to share some suggestions on how to encourage people to leave a comment. ¶
It can be frustrating at times, but I find comments are far less reliable than likes. One thing I’ve noticed is that you have it set up so that there’s only a preview of your post on the WordPress Reader platform. It might not seem like much but the extra click can stop people from reading the whole post. If they stop there, they’re unlikely to comment. I think it’s a pretty sizeable percentage of potential viewers that you’re not reaching.
Do you comment on others posts often? That helps to build familiarity and makes them more likely to comment on your posts. It might seem a little comment for comment, but in reality it’s about making connections.
I hope that helps or at least gives you something to think about. Don’t give up.
The problem is that I haven’t been focusing too much effort on social media. Back in the early 2010s, it’s a lot easier. Granted, I was active on anime forums while commenting on other blogs. Since then, the blogosphere has changed and it has affected some trends. Even commenting on blogs don’t guarantee that someone will leave a comment back these days. Most instances, they don’t, which questions if it’s worthwhile doing so. In the first half of 2010, I suppose that a good number do leave comments back.
Ether way, I am still figuring out a strategy to get out of this slump, but I did implement your suggestion by allowing full posts to be seen in the feed and it should apply to the WordPress Reader as well.
I hope it works out for you and you find the joy in it once more. There’s no doubting that at times it can get quite frustrating, but the thing that brings back that spark could be just around the corner.
I left a comment about this on your blog quite some time ago, and I regret to say I’m no closer to the answer myself. Back then I was on the cusp of similar burnout and grasping at anything (like finding people in a similar situation) to motivate myself and work toward a solution. More than a year later, I’ve effectively given up.
Last April was my final attempt at any kind of regularity with my blog. I got comments and views, but I always did for my April events. Part of it my be bribery, but either way I didn’t get as much activity as I would have liked and for the amount of work I put in I didn’t want to try anymore. I didn’t do a similar event this year. I’m too tired and have too little faith in my ability to attract people.
I’m being very negative and I don’t want that to be my message to you. Instead I’ll say this: I don’t think the quality of your writing (or even the content of your posts in many cases) has anything to do with how many comments you get. Clickbait and popular topics notwithstanding, if you’re popular on social media (esp twitter) and build up a large follower base, you get comments. Simple as that. People stop by to chat with you because they know you and while not every comment helps you improve your blog, some of them will.
To be honest though, I myself am not one of those people. I only comment if I have something meaningful to say and the content is of personal interest to me. Most of what you write about doesn’t meet that for me, but I’m just one very particular type of person, and I’m sure I’m not the norm. I’ve also barely any anime blogs for nearly a year so there’s that.
But prior to that I had been very hard on myself and experimented a lot with content to see if I personally had a problem as writer. I’m not the kind of person who links to blame others and I was determined to improve myself through my writing and content. But more and more I feel like my problem is that I don’t engage frequently on social media. It’s not in my blood to just toss out throwaway 140 character remarks that don’t say anything meaningful, but that’s how you get visibility. If blogging is important to you, I would suggest trying to be a lot more active in that regard. You need to put in work to get results, but you need to make sure it’s the right kind of work.
I have given up on myself, but I hope you find what you’re looking for. Best of luck.
I’d like to second Lynn’s insights.
After I upgraded to Jetpack Premium, it improved my visibility in WordPress Reader, and both my visitor count and number of comments edged upward. Most of my comments come from regular readers and/or bloggers, and they seem to use Reader a lot.
Not sure if this matters, but as I tried to type my comment, the page crashed — there’s something in the ads that killed the Javascript interpreter. I switched to typing my comment first into a text editor, then pasting it into the site, but maybe that’s discouraging people? Because as soon as it crashed, it lost everything I’d typed.
The only other thing I’d suggest is studying some of the sites that seem to get a lot of comments, like I Drink and Watch Anime or 100 Word Anime. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your content! Maybe studying their sites will give you an idea of what they’re doing differently.
As I was tying my comment, your page crashed two more times! That might actually be part of the problem…
Seriously: I like your site and the material. I don’t think it’s a matter of the quality of posts.
I hope this helps!
Regarding the Javascript error, it’s quite odd that the browser will crash will crash because of the ads scripts for WordAds (which WordPress.com runs). For the time being, I can’t really remove the ads as they are the source of revenue, until I can get full time work (it can be a few more weeks or months, depending if I get picked). Once I start working, I may reconsider removing the ads, maybe after I receive the payout. I have seen some issues with the WordAds redirecting to a spammy website on mobile devices.
I will consider looking at posts from more successful blogs and tweak some things for future content and hopefully things will get better from there.
Thanks for the suggestions.
It seems better tonight; and last week, I was getting the same thing on 100 Word Anime, but it seems clean now, too. So maybe there was something unusual with AdWords?
It’s a pain to have to deal with third parties, isn’t it?
Must be the Adwords services since I have seen complaints on the WordPress.com support forums regarding the issue. The funny thing is that this only happens only on smartphones and tablets. Hopefully WordPress.com will do something about it.
Don’t really have much to say but I did followed your twitter and commented here a while ago, to which you didn’t respond to. I like attention myself to be honest, and the fact you didn’t replied to me and those comments above makes me hesitate because you make an impression of not wanting to engage with your audience. I realized you may be busy and all but if I were to be honest, this is my opinion on the matter. Your posts seems fine to me, though could’ve used a bit more screenshots, and the page is nice to look at. No shitty ads either so much plus for me. Nonetheless, best of luck with your blogging. I’ll try coming often and started commenting from now on to support fellow yuri and all girls anime fans. Putting in additional info here, I also visited Yurination and Yurireview often.
Sorry for replying so late. In the past few weeks, I have been busy mostly because I was preparing for job interviews during this month and the past month, which can explain the late replies.
As for the ads, I can’t do much about them until I have a full time job to cover some of the costs for hosting. As mentioned earlier, once I start working, I will reconsider removing the advertisements once I receive the payout as I would rather not have them and of course, the WordAds service has been causing some issues with mobile devices with spammy redirections due to malicious ad services buying adds in the WordAds services.