Since my last post about the extent to which social networking and blogging are used in the HR community, I have been thinking more about this topic. I have scanned quite a few of the better known HR-related blogs and noticed one overwhelming trend that seems to apply to all of them: Blog readers hardly ever post comments.
There are obviously exceptions to this rule and I have been lucky enough to elicit a few comments myself – so ‘commentors’ you can ignore this post! But this got me thinking about readers’ motives for visiting blogs. The implication is that it’s very much an information gathering or learning exercise, rather than being driven by a desire to get involved in a debate with experts or with fellow blog readers. I’m very happy to be proved wrong (feel free to do this by immediately posting a comment!!!), but I’m sure that this is a fairly common pattern in the field of HR and beyond.
So it seems like there might be a somewhat vicarious army of HR blog readers out there – amassing interesting information in silence. Maybe once your voice is heard you move from being ‘blog reader’ to ‘blogger’ the experience is changed forever??
But from my own experience, I can only encourage you to take the plunge and become a fully fledged blogger. Sharing your views and reacting to other people’s opinions in a free flowing way can be genuinely rewarding and can lead to understanding and realisations that wouldn’t be possible if you were reading a book or newspaper.
End of diary………for now.
April 1, 2008 at 5:40 pm
I’d definitely second that. Putting your thoughts up and out for inspection and debate is a great thing to do. You don’t just learn, you meet people too, which is the thing that I least expected when I started blogging.
With regards to comments and commenting, I’d say there is about 1 commenter to every 200 readers. The number of people who TALK to me about my blog still out numbers those who comment. I guess we are all still a little nervous about public speaking!
April 12, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Not sure if this trend is restricted to HR Cary. I have been blogging now for 18 months or so and whilst I hav a strong readership there are few who contribute. What is interesting is when you look at the different Web 2.0 technologies and the different levels of contribution you get from from these. I find that by far and away the most responsive group are those on LinkedIn. I often get 30 plus answers to a question there whilst in Facebook I’m lucky to get a peep!