Categories: Articles

Your Blog And Podcast Are Not Enough – Start Adding Comments

I’ve been watching the traffic to this Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast. It’s not that things have slowed down. Quite the contrary. There seems to be more action in the comments section then ever before and, by the looks of our web-based analytics tools (which does include my favorite, Google Analytics), the traffic is rising as well.

But that’s not enough.

I was just listening to episode #291 of For Immediate Release – The Hobson And Holtz Report Podcast and they had a segment about commenting on Blogs inspired by a ProBlogger Blog posting entitled, The Power Of Commenting On Blogs. The big lesson? A simple way to drive excellent and steady traffic to a Blog is to comment intelligently on other highly-trafficked Blogs. While it seems simple enough, it was a huge slap in the face meets wake-up call for me.

When I think back to early days of this Blog – I’m going back over four years – I built the initial traffic by finding out others who were creating valuable Blog content, and by adding to their conversations… or by joining the conversation in general it inspired readers to come and check out my Blog. As our lives get increasingly complex with Podcasts, twitter, Facebook profiles and more, taking the time to be a part of the community has been usurped by expecting others to join this one.

Not cool.

While inspiration on other Blogs does inspire the content here (and trackbacks) – like that posting from ProBlogger, I’m becoming increasingly more aware that while the conversation on this Blog is deep and rich, I need to "be out there" to keep up with what’s going and, more importantly, to get my ideas out there. Having a Blog and Podcast is, simply, not enough. I need to encourage the conversation here, trackback to those Blogs that are inspiring me, but – more importantly – I have to get out of lurker mode and engage in the conversation that is taking place beyond my own RSS feed.

Mitch Joel

Mitch Joel lives at the intersection of technology, business transformation and consumer culture. He is the Executive Director of Next Era Institute, a strategic intelligence platform helping leaders understand the forces reshaping business, technology, culture and society. The Institute identifies which shifts matter, explores their wider significance and translates them into strategic direction and momentum. Mitch is also a globally recognized keynote speaker. He has delivered thousands of presentations across both B2B and B2C industries to organizations including Google, Walmart, LEGO, Shopify, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Strategy Magazine has called him “one of North America’s leading visionaries.” Mitch built his career by working directly inside the waves of change that reshaped modern business. He founded and built a digital marketing agency that worked with some of the world’s largest brands and was later acquired by WPP, where he served as President of a firm operating in 25 countries with almost 3,000 employees. Mitch is the bestselling author of Six Pixels of Separation and CTRL ALT Delete, and the host of Thinking With Mitch Joel, one of the longest-running business podcasts in the world. His writing and commentary appear in outlets including Harvard Business Review, Fast Company and Inc. Magazine. He is a member of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches and was named to the Thinkers50 Radar. Mitch also hosts Groove – The No Treble Podcast, documenting the oral history of electric bass players. Mitch is also Co-Founder of ThinkersOne, a platform that enables companies to bring personalized thought leadership from world-class experts into meetings, events and off-sites in focused 15-minute bursts.