I'm a member of SITS ( a group of 40,000 women bloggers dedicated to supporting one another by leaving comments & learning about blogging). Each week SITS hosts Saturday Sharefest, which allows you to post a link to your favorite blog post from the week, and in turn, you are supposed to read the blog of the person who posted before you and be sure to leave a comment.
It seems like a good way to get traffic to your blog and maybe pick up some new readers (I normally submit a post from Tinsel & Tine). But it hasn't been very effective for me. I do follow the rules and read someone's blog post from the site and make a comment, even if it's not the last person who posted before me. But I often find my blog still devoid of comments at the end of my Saturday:(
Anyway, the blog I read today is called Singing Through The Rain and she wrote a post called "The Secret Life of a Girl With Anxiety.
I admired her courage in writing the post and found myself responding with more that just the perfunctory "Stopping by from SITS - Nice blog". Here's my comment:
A very moving and brave post. I'm glad you were able to write it. Anxiety is so very difficult to deal with. I've suffered from panic attacks too and in the beginning truly believed I was having a stroke or heart attack. The mind/body/spirit connection is an actuality that many people scoff at as new age crap, but in actuality, if one's mind and spirit are in turmoil, the body reacts in debilitating ways.I admire those who suffer with anxiety but are still able to get married and have children. I feel like my problems with anxiety have in some ways prevented me from having a relationship that could lead to marriage. I try to alleviate my stress and fears through meditation, acupuncture, exercise, and a magnesium complex I get from Whole Foods called Calm, but there are times I feel I should be taking something stronger.I am thankful my anxiety is not just general and across the board or all the time or has an unknown cause. Mine has always been centered around lifestyle - desperately seeking a certain lifestyle. It really kicked in at age 38 when I realized my life was no where near being where I thought I'd be at that age, with no knowledge, ability or plan of how to catch up to my age and live out my dreams.
I'm constantly working on acceptance and trying to enjoy the present (see blog post from July), but it's very hard.
Visiting from SITS
I had no idea about your anxiety. That is brave of you to admit out loud and then put into print. Did this very honest comment post elicit any further commentary? I too am wondering why we don't get comments - seems like some people get hundreds. There's got to be more to it than paying it forward.
ReplyDeleteHey D,
DeleteNope, didn't get any response to my comment.
In 2007, I was really, really sick. I wasn't on fb then and it was way before starting Tinsel & Tine. So that's probably why you don't know about it. I won't go into all the symptoms, but I had to start seeing a Rheumatologist who diagnosed me with a form of Lupus. But I refused to accept that and went holistic, eventually discovering it was stress and anxiety causing problems with my immune system. I still have relapses now and again, but acupuncture helps tremendously when things get bad.
With regards to blog comments. I get so jealous of Barbara's community of readers who respond to her every post.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could find a community of movie-goers that would respond to my reviews. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard. I do have return visitors according to Google Analytics.
I know my writing style is engaging and I come up with some original things to say and share about movies/films. I just can't figure out why no one will chime in if they've seen the movie or plan to.
It's not as if I write Tinsel & Tine like an impersonal magazine. I'm always including personal tidbits.
The Gibraltar restaurant review included stuff about my breakup with James. I thought this might elicit some responses, but dead silence. You'd think anyone who saw some of the other posts which featured James as my new boyfriend and then saw the one about the break up would say something encouraging or share their own break up story... crickets chirping.
And like you said, other blogs get tons of comments. If most blogs got no comments then that would be fine; but blogs that haven't been around nearly as long as mine and frankly not as well done as T & T, get a minimum of 15 comments per post - sometimes on a really short post that doesn't really say much of anything!
Sorry for the rant, but this is something that just really bothers me, even after all this time. My post for "Django Unchained" has gotten over 1100 unique visitors, how could that many people stop by and no one, not one person leave a comment?
I hear you loud and clear as those crickets chirping! All I get are spammers. So many that when I deleted them, I accidentally deleted a bunch of genuine comments. I too have people reading the main blog, but rarely do I get comments. I had someone pin a recipe of mine and I got hundreds upon hundreds of views over the course of a few weeks, not one message. I did get a few more likes on facebook though. I don't get the blogs that are shite and have people falling all over-themselves to write comments (not any of our friend's blogs, btw). I often think if the person is famous or connected to something larger, a business, a book, a possibility of something larger, then people are more apt to comment so they can be a part of it too. We need to explore this more in an upcoming get together. I'm not sure who reads my stuff, and because I haven't posted and publicised my The Onion Girl blog, where I've been writing my more serious and dark stuff, I'm really not sure who other than my friend, Susan Hill, is reading what I have to say and share. Well girlfriend, we have each other. I'll always comment on you - it's a pleasure to read what you have to say.
ReplyDeleteThat's so cool, that your recipe got pinned! Sorry no comments, but that is a nice compliment.
DeleteYes, I guess we'll just keep supporting each others excellent posts!
PS. I didn't know about The Onion Girl, I'll check it out. It is good to have a ranting, dark or silly, don't care about marketing it blog.