Suffice it to say, 2014 is almost over. Last Friday I put out a post talking about my goals for 2015. Those were mainly personal goals, mainly for myself, though sometimes I like to share because they might inspire others to do the same.
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This post is a little different, some quick hitters. There are things I’ve seen over the past year, both good and bad, from bloggers all over the place. There are some things I needed to do myself, some I did, some I didn’t. I figure if I’m going to pick on others then I might as well call myself out where I can.
I don’t expect anyone to change a thing because I don’t like it; people will do what people do. Still, at least I’ll be on record once again, in case some people who are doing some of these things wonder why I don’t stop by all that often, or do stop by more often than not. I’m doing 15 since the upcoming year has “15” in it; kind of cheesy but I’m going with it anyway.
Enough of the preamble. Let’s get to it:
1. Stop sending notices to people asking them to subscribe to comments when they leave one. That’s one of the most irksome things in the world to me. I hate when I get something asking me to subscribe to the blog but I can deal with that. Telling me, after I checked the box, that I have to now subscribe to comments to get a response to my comment… ugh. You’re wasting my time because I’m never subscribing; I wouldn’t have left a comment if I thought you could care less if I saw it.
2. Please check to see if your comment notifications work. I comment on lots of blogs. I don’t keep a list of blogs I comment on. Therefore, unless I get an email telling me you’ve responded to me I may never know that you responded, and I won’t be alone.
The way to test this is to either log off your blog or use a different browser, go to a post and leave a comment. If you don’t get an email from your blog then you know it’s not working and should fix it. I test my blogs at least 3 times a year; it only takes a couple of minutes to do.
3. Respond to comments, and not just the new ones. I’m sometimes late to visiting a blog. It might only be a day, it might be a couple of weeks. Either way, all of us who talk about blogging tell you how important it is to respond to comments. However, some of the bloggers who talk about it only respond to comments left the day the post goes live.
If you don’t care about comments after that or the people who leave them why not set your blog up to not accept comments after one day? I can tell you how to do it. What, you think that would make your blog look like an unfriendly place? Same with not responding to almost all comments in my opinion.
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4. Leave real comments. Here’s a truth; sometimes, if you know the person, a one line comment isn’t such a bad thing. However, if you’re not known by the blog owner, a one line comment looks like spam. Even a two line comment can look like spam. Sometimes I delete those comments, sometimes I’ll leave them, but if you haven’t really said anything I’m probably not responding to your comment. As always, if the comment doesn’t address anything within the post, it’s probably being deleted.
5. Misleading titles; stop that! In all the years I’ve had this blog, I don’t think I’ve ever left a misleading title just to get visitors. I’m not going to lie; I’m not great at titles anyway, so maybe I have a bias against being mislead.
Still, if you tell me something is going to be shocking, it had better be. If you tell me there’s one thing that’s the most important thing ever, I hope you make your case for it instead of going around the bush, mentioning it once, then going off on a tangent.
6. If you accept guest posts, do two things: write at least half of the content on your blog; read the posts before they’re released. First off, I’m probably coming to your blog because I liked your writing style or reading what you had to say. However, if you’re only writing a post every once in a while and everything else is from someone else, and they’re not regular contributors, I feel cheated. Second, if someone else’s article isn’t up to your writing standard, realize that it can only bring you down eventually, even if traffic numbers stay up because of the new content consistently being posted.
When I was accepting guest posts on my finance blog, I spent lots of time reading those things, editing some of them and sending the rest back to the writer to fix them. Frankly, that was time consuming, but I knew someone else’s bad writing would reflect on me. Please don’t give up quality for expediency and traffic.
7. It’s okay to revisit topics and thoughts you’ve previously written about if they’re timely or evergreen. Above I linked to my post talking about 7 years of writing this blog. Linking back to old posts makes a lot of sense, both because of SEO and because people who like your content will want to check out things related to new articles.
Thing is, as I was looking back through some of my content I realized that there are things I touched upon once years ago that are still pertinent, but few people are going to go searching for those old posts unless I guide them there through a new post. Thus, writing about a topic again, even if some things haven’t changed all that much, can work wonders. If you’ve changed a point of view or added something new you can always link to the old article. I need to do this more often, especially with nearly 1,600 articles here.
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8. Your popups are irritating; at least let me finish reading your article. Along with some other gripes I had about blogs I was visiting in 2013, the biggest was pop-ups. I really hated it, as I addressed two versions of it in that post.
I get it; some guru told you that even though they irritate people, you’ll get lots of them to sign up for it and it’s better to care about people you’re probably going to market to and irritate a different way instead of worrying about popups irritating people who actually might want to read your blog; sigh…
Fine. If you’re going to do it anyway, why not at least think about those who are reading your content? Don’t have your popup jump out when someone gets to your page. Don’t have your popup jump up when people might be 30 seconds into reading your article, unless it’s extremely short. Don’t have your popup hiding the X we’re hoping to find as quickly as possible to close it if we’re not interested.
If it’s going to pop up every single time people stop by tell them, instead of the “lie” (misstatement) I’ve been told that it will only pop up the first time I visit. Because it’s either a lie or you don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’m probably not coming back… probably, since sometimes I forget and visit a second time, have that sucker pop up and immediately leave.
9. Learn the difference between fact and opinion. Most of us write opinions on our blog; that’s a fact. lol A fact is more along the lines of a tutorial where you’re telling someone how to do something, or the results of a study you’ve conducted and what your results are. Even then that’s just your fact, since for both of those examples someone might be doing those things a different way or coming up with different results.
Debating whether content is king (which I believe) or not is really more opinion than anything else. Telling someone that writing “butter” 50 times in every single blog post they write will not only hurt their website but will eventually get them delisted from Google is fact because Google told us so.
10. Worry more about your content than about keywords and SEO. This is a tough one for many bloggers but I’m going to clarify my position here. There’s nothing wrong with shooting for keywords in a post, just like we try to go with our websites. But I read many posts that feel “fake” because the writer isn’t writing naturally.
Readability is the biggest thing in the eyes of search engines these days. If their algorithms can discern what you’re talking about, it’s all good. Helping them by adding some keywords or keyword phrases will definitely help, but if it’s the only thing you’re worried about then you’re missing the concept of blogging which, in the long run, is about readers.
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11. Being contrarian; don’t always write “for” the readers. I’m going against #10 but only for this one reason. I’ve had conversations with some bloggers where many of them feel their content isn’t worth anything if they don’t write to their audience. This often means condescending 3rd grade level content that either says nothing or repeats exactly what a reader can find elsewhere.
My reasoning here is to look at your writing style, your errors, your misspellings, and ask yourself this question; would you want to read this? Then ask yourself the next question; will you ever go back and read this?
As with my videos, I always go back and read my own content at least once after its published. I’ll read it when comments start to come in, or else if it’s a post that didn’t get many comments I’ll go back to see what it looks like.
This might sound like braggadocio but I tend to like most of what I write and most of my videos. There are some posts and videos that I’m not crazy about and I might go in and change a sentence or two (with videos I might go back and make them private).
One should feel comfortable with their own content; if not, your audience probably won’t be comfortable with it either.
12. Share more of what you read, and offer commentary when possible. Did you read this post? Even if you didn’t comment on it did you share it?
I’m big on sharing stuff I read, especially blogs. I share mostly on Twitter, though occasionally I’ll share on Google Plus or Facebook (rare for blog posts). When I share in other spaces, if there’s room left I’ll almost always make a little comment, whether I commented on the actual post or not. Even if I can only squeeze in a couple of words I’ll do it.
Why? I want people to know that I read it and where I might be leaning as far as my opinion of it. I tend to believe that goes a long way towards encouraging people to check it out. It helps other bloggers and helps to encourage them to write more. Also, it’s a way to get some reciprocation because people know they can trust you and trust what you write. That’s not the reason I do it but it’s a nice side benefit.
13. There are true “ranking lists” posts and then there’s linkbait. I’ve not hidden the fact that I want to be more known for blogging. I’ve started my campaign on Twitter and, in 2015, I’ll be expanding it to other social media circles, as well as making sure I highlight things from at least 3 of my blogs more often.
I also want to be mentioned on more blogs that have top 25, 50 or 100 blogs, no matter the topic. However, I recognize that some of the lists are what we call linkbait, which means you’re trying to get attention from the people who you’re highlighting and pretty much nothing else.
What’s the difference? People who are giving it real attention will say something about those blogs rather than just list them. For instance, back in 2012 I wrote a series of 19 posts on the topic Black Web Friday where I highlighted black bloggers and websites. I didn’t just pop up links to sites without commentary. I gave a bit of explanation for each link and, when possible, something about the writer.
In my opinion that was true value to the readers and not just linkbait which, if that had been my intention I’d have failed miserably because most of the bloggers and websites I highlighted never found out about it. lol
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14. Don’t only be kinder in 2015 but acknowledge social issues as well. I’ve got to tell you, 2014 was a tough year for me mentally. Forget the fact that politics didn’t quite go how I had envisioned and go straight to the fact that the biggest issue that could have potentially affected me were all the stories of bad police conduct and black people… okay, black males mainly, although if I were to be fully truthful it was minorities in general.
I was bothered a lot about it. However, I didn’t write about any of it on this blog, though I really wanted to. I did address it once on my business blog and in a couple of my YouTube videos because I had to get things off my chest.
How many blogs did I visit that touched upon the subject? Not a single one. Did I visit any blogs? Lots! That’s a shame people; we can’t fix stuff if we don’t talk about it.
That one scare you? This year I participated in the Blog Action Day project, where the topic was inequality. How many of my blogging friends were a part of it? None. Did I visit any of the blogs I usually visit on that day looking for it? Yes, lots. I at least got to visit blogs of people I didn’t know to see how they wrote about it and enjoyed that, but it would have been nice to talk about the subject with people I knew. Oh yeah; that post only got 2 real comments also, which is a major shame.
I get it; social issues are scary. Here’s the problem; if you stand for nothing you’ll fall for anything. Not only that but if you don’t let people know where you stand on something that’s important for you here and there, you run the risk of being bogarted without knowing it or without knowing who else might support your position or might even be against your position. Taking a stand takes some bravery, and even if your blog is considered a niche blog every once in a while diverting to something else makes you look like a real person.
And yes, this one is totally opinion (see #9). 🙂
Still, we can address issues like these and still be relatively nice. There are lots of very nice people online who complain about this or that every once in a while. I like to think I’m one of those people. I’ll never shy away from an opinion but it’s rare that I’ll specifically call someone out here or anywhere else. That’s not necessary; neither is bad language. You’ll always be safe visiting this blog, even if I touch upon something I know will be truly controversial to someone.
15. At the end of the day, blog because you enjoy it, comment on other people’s blogs because you enjoy the camaraderie, and share because you enjoy helping others. When I started blogging almost 10 years ago (my business blog turns 10 in February), I’ll admit that I had a business purpose for it. Thing is, almost no one was writing the types of things about blogging that I, Adrienne, Brian, Peter (he’ll be getting back to more blogging and making money tips when he has time lol) and a host of other long time friends do or have done. In a way, we were part of the first wave of bloggers writing about blogging; how cool is that?
We’re still at it all these years later. Can’t do that if you don’t enjoy it. I’ve seen lots of blogs that have left the blogosphere, never to be heard from again. Those folks didn’t enjoy it enough to continue, or got into it for a reason other than enjoyment and couldn’t flip the switch.
When it’s done for pure purposes, with other things such as making money in some fashion as a side benefit, you’ll find that writing becomes easier, sharing becomes easier, and reading other blogs isn’t a chore but a pleasure… unless the blog you’re trying to read is written badly or has too many popups.
That’s for reading. For commenting, it’s fun unless the blog moderates comments (I hate that), has captcha (hate that also), or uses commenting systems that try to manipulate you into having to create new passwords (Disqus, Livefyre… nope, not me) or is using you to help promote their blog (by having your comments show up on Google + or Facebook only).
If you don’t enjoy blogging or reading blogs or commenting on blogs… don’t participate at all. That is, unless you’re famous enough to get away with it, like Seth Godin (whose “blog” I still won’t visit), who openly admits he could care less if anyone reads it and doesn’t care what you have to say about what he’s writing. That’s okay; I may not visit his blog for that reason but I have read one of his books and liked it. See, I said something most people might find controversial then ended it with something nice (see #14 lol).
I think that’s enough; I wonder how many people will read this to the end. At least there are pictures. 🙂 These are my wishes; do you have any you’d like to mention? Enjoy your day!
I read the post through from the top to the bottom and got irritated at the graphic for the word, sad not being able to type it exactly like it is there, enjoyed the pictures and the total content. As usual, you have given great advice and for me it is very easy to follow for reasons well known to you. I follow all of them already anyway.
So, Mitch, you have at least one reader who reads all your posts from top to bottome and even obeys you.
Happy new year to you friend. I am glad that we met each other.
Thanks Rummuser; always good to know that at least one person reads some of this stuff. 🙂 I thought that was very creative of the person who created it; wish I had that kind of talent also. Have a great new year!
Well timed Mitch. I’ve lost focus and confidence this year, and some of your comments feel very supportive, so thanks.
Re commenting on social issues … I’ve been told so often “never do it because it’ll turn people off” that I’m wary, especially after comments about my blog were made public by a high profile man in my profession. He clearly thought commentary of a political nature was a no-go area. However, my clients are directly impacted by current policies and I believe it’s not helpful to stand by and say nothing as if it’s not happening. To me, that’s being complicit and young and unemployed people don’t need any more negativity.
As for those ghastly pop-ups – I detest them, and often don’t bother reading further. I feel I’m not being respected as a reader.
Cheers
Sue
Thanks for commenting Sue. You know, I tend to look down on people who find ways to bully others about what they write on their own blogs in their own time. I would dare someone to try to keep me silent like that and tell me what I couldn’t write about, unless it was proprietary about the business. Of course that’s also probably why I work for myself. I’m glad to have helped validate your beliefs.
Yeah, those popups really irk me a lot. Today, within minutes of this post going live, I visited two blogs and had the popup come as soon as I got there; ugh!
I read it too! Sometimes. 😉 Wow – so much to comment on, where to start? Won’t hijack Rummuser’s comment, though… must ruminate and start my own. But hey, I read some of this stuff!
#1 – WordPress.com does that. I’m not sure you can turn it off. If you can, I don’t know how. Does my blog ever do that to you? (If so, it’s from JetPack, most likely.)
#2-#4 – Yep. I think I have those covered; agree 100%.(You did contradict yourself in #3 and #4, you know…)
#5 – If my titles are ever misleading, it’s because they’re meant to be clever, not because I’m out to commit fraud. I try never to tell people how they ought to feel about something. How they ought to act, maybe – but their emotions are their own, and I don’t have much influence over that.
#6 – I don’t. Solves THAT problem! (Okay, I might – but mostly from other writers and/or people I know well and trust. No more unsolicited “free content” for me! LOL)
#7 – Some of my conversations are weirdly URL-heavy. It’s like shorthand after a while. “Oh, I already wrote about my thoughts on THAT topic – here, go read, I’ll wait, rest my fingers a bit…”
#8 – If you see pop-ups on my blog, either I’m testing something and probably want to remove it, or my blog is DISEASED. Please tell me, so I can get it to the ER and save it.
#9 – Strangely, all I can think about, now, is butter. Darn you.
#10 – Write well and the keywords will naturally happen. Write like a robot or a drunk monkey, and they won’t.
#11 – If you want to write for me, that’s fine. You know what interests me, and it’s not that bland, obligatory pablum that seems to be the mainstay of the blogosphere. Please. Don’t. Write. That.
#12 – THAT’s the big one. We used to do that, didn’t we? We used to give links (relevant ones, in context, that tied it all together – back before Infolinks and Kontera and crap made it hard to trust a link and click it!)
#13 – I’ve never been comfortable with ranking people or things. Inevitably, someone gets their feelings hurt or their nose out of joint. I refused to add my “Top 8” on MySpace, have never named a single BFF, and even had TWO maids of honor at my wedding (my ONLY attendants!!) So no, and I’m not even all that jazzed to be on such lists (although being nowhere near them stings a tiny bit, I’ll confess). It makes me feel weirdly obligated to reciprocate, and maybe deep down, I don’t want to. So – no.
#14 – I used to. I’ve been told to shut up and stop being so full of good intentions by all sides, so maybe not now. Still nursing burned fingers. I don’t know. I’ll agree, though, 2014 was a rough and deeply disappointing year.
#15 – Again, we used to do this, didn’t we? I haven’t been feeling it for far too long. It used to be fun. I still want it to be.
Well Holly, you know I have to respond in kind, though probably not to all of them.
#1 Actually, it’s a particular plugin that some of the folks use to send those things out because not everyone is on WordPress.com; I’m certainly not. I don’t use that plugin because I don’t want to send subscribe messages to people. If Feedburner actually disappears one day then I’ll have to set up a way to get posts to folks who subscribe via email somehow, but I’ll worry about that if and when it occurs.
#3 & #4 No, there’s no contradiction; at least I’m not seeing it. The first point is for blog owners who never respond to any comments they receive after so many hours on the day they put out a post or after the first day. The second is for people leaving comments on blogs that aren’t particularly good. I almost always respond to comments; maybe I shouldn’t allow comments that address the article but don’t really say anything, but if I’m reading it and it looks like it might have been written for real, then I’ll leave it but maybe not respond to it. But that’s the rare thing for me. As to the other, Monday I responded to a comment left on a post from 2 years ago. So I’m missing the contradiction, but I’m sure you’ll let me know where it is. lol
#5 Sometimes your titles are what I call “literary”, and that’s a much different thing than what I’m talking about. You know, you’ve seen some of the titles proclaiming to tell us shocking stuff or secret stuff that never ends up being that.
#9 LOL! My system’s starting not to like too much better, and that’s depressing me…
#11 It’s the bland stuff I’m kind of railing against here. I’d like to think it’s mainly people from other lands who are writing this bland, overly formal stuff but it’s at least 50-50 sometimes and that’s depressing. It’s like someone trying to remember their grammar lessons from 4th grade and applying that to their writing because it’s all they have to fall back on.
#12 Yes we did, and I still do. I don’t worry about those other types of links because we can hover over those things and see what’s what; at least I can. Still, we can’t worry about perceptions of others if we know we’re doing the right thing; okay, I don’t. lol
#13 I think ranking is hard to do unless you’re using a specific thing for criteria and only basing it off that; otherwise it’s just opinion. Tuesday I saw a post retweeted by someone that listed the top 10 blogs of 2014. I had to go take a look and I only knew one of them, with the rest being personal blogs of no real ranking (yeah, I checked). Without any criteria, it was my assumption these were blogs the person just liked, which then calls his credibility into question because he didn’t really say anything about any of the blogs. Course, when you see links on Twitter, you’re never sure where you’re going sometimes.
#14 I’ve known you for a long time and never known you to be the type who allowed anyone to tell you what to do in that regard. Course, now that you’re writing children’s books maybe you have a financial responsibility that you didn’t previously have. Not only do I not let anyone tell me what I should or shouldn’t write about, but that might be one of those times when I name names (might that is) and see if they’re willing to back up their position online; no one ever does though. I could have said so much more about what occurred in 2014; I hope 2015 is much better.
#15 You know what’s funny? There’s so many things we used to do that either we don’t do or do for different reasons or do in different ways. I said somewhere above (or maybe in another recent post) that I go back and read some of my stuff and watch my old videos. In my mind I wrote some pretty good stuff here and there in 2008 and 2009, and my style hasn’t really changed all that much. I probably don’t do as many reviews as I have in the past, and I write a lot more of the theory of blogging than full processes of blogging, but my mind thinks so many other people are covering that and I’ve already done it multiple times that it doesn’t always need rehashing. Luckily I still enjoy it and probably only wish that I was getting those 50 comment posts more often. But making money to pay bills always comes first; life’s biggest rule. 🙂
#3/4 – you mean some sort of arbitrary time limit thing? I thought you were saying, on the one hand, that we should respond to EVERY comment that comes in, but on the other, you admitted to not replying to the one-liners that add nothing to the conversation. That was the contradiction in my mind. I think I get it, now.
#5 – You know me; I’ll choose “literary” over SEO-optimized, every time. I don’t do the “Upworthiest” thing, though I do find the content they share to be worth a look, despite the hyperbolic click-bait headlines.
#12 – It’s a lot of trouble to go to, you know, if no one else is looking at your links. It just now occurred to me that what I’ve felt for blogging, for a while, now, is kind of what you feel like when you grow up and realize that there are a gazillion underpaid mall Santas all sitting on mounds of fake snow trying to sell kids on the notion that they really, really, really want to ask him for the hot toy of the year. I know too much; I want the magic back. I wish I’d never heard of Alexa. And even now, I know I never really cared about pagerank or Alexa or any of it – but the knowing tarnished the tinsel, anyway.
#13 – Hmmm. It almost feels like a challenge, now that you put it that way…
#14 – True. And no, there’s nothing standing between me and my outspoken sense of right and wrong. I guess I’m just tired. We’ve talked about this, you and I. I don’t like feeling like every conversation is a field full of landmines. It gets in the way of honest and fruitful conversation and learning. Some of it is just nonsense; some of it bears deeper thought. Some of it… well, some of it will always guarantee I’ll eventually hit a tipping point and have to say something come hell or high water, right? 🙂
#15 – I miss the posts that got pages of comments, but not all the schmoozing I had to do to get them, I think.
Hey Mitch,
You probably know this but I’m currently on vacation so that’s why I’m really late getting by here. I have some blog posts loaded up to read and this is one of them. Before I go on I do want to thank you for the mention but I’m going to go down your list because I read your post all the way through as well. 😉
#1 – Boy do I agree with you about that one. If I want to subscribe I will so stop trying to force me into it because I also find that extremely annoying.
#2 – There are so many people who do not have this in place and although that won’t stop me from commenting, it will stop me from coming back to see if you’ve responded. I’m sorry but who has the time!
#3 – Amen to that my friend, what’s wrong with those people. Either you appreciate people reading your posts and commenting or you don’t. If you don’t then close the comments because not responding is shooting yourself in the foot.
#4 – I agree that the short comments if I know the person will go through but I’ll also tell you that all of them don’t. If they’re in a hurry and just commenting for the sake of saying something but it’s obvious to me that they didn’t really read the post either I’ll delete some of those. I know, I’m bad.
#5 – I hate the misleading titles and it upsets me when I start reading the post and quickly learn just what the heck they did. Makes me not want to come back.
#6 – There are several blogs that I stopped visiting because I never heard from the blog owner. They had so many guest posts that I was starting to wonder if they were even blogging anymore. I guess I haven’t run across too many guest posts that you could tell hadn’t been proof read so that’s a good thing. I agree though, write the majority of the posts yourself.
#7 – I just had someone tell me a couple weeks ago after having found an older post that I needed to revisit that topic and update it. I know a lot of people do that but I just haven’t. I know that so many people don’t read a lot of the older posts and I’m okay with that because mine are not evergreen.
#8 – I hate pop ups too, any kind period. If people are going to have them though they should wait until you’re ready to leave the blog entirely. From what I’ve been told, most people hate them when they are reading the posts from their cell phone. They are so big that you can’t x out of them but I don’t really read a lot using my cell but I find them irritating just the same. To each his own though.
#9 – If you are stating something from someone or company that they have put out there as fact then of course that’s a fact that came from the owner/creator, etc. Your content is king example is pretty spot on. That is definitely an opinion and everyone has theirs. To say it’s a fact would be wrong so I see your point on this one. I am very good at sharing my opinion on things! LOL!!!
#10 – I totally agree with that and I think that even a lot of SEO experts now (I hate that word expert) are saying the same thing. The search engines are very interested in what people are sharing and if it’s helping their readers so the keyword stuffing of content is no longer going to help you. That’s my “opinion” of course! 😉
#11 – I think I have to agree with you about not always writing for the reader. Granted you do want to help them in any way by listening to their needs and then following through with how you can help them. There are times though that I write for me because when I do that I’m giving the reader an opportunity to get to know me better. I pretty much like all of my content and I’m sure if I were to go back through it all I would find some things I could have improved upon. For the most part though I’m happy.
#12 – I pretty much share all that I read but some content I don’t. I do my best to keep in mind the different platforms and my audience. If I were to share everything I read and it was so off subject of why they follow me then I’m sure some people might drop me. Maybe, maybe not but I try my best to only share what I think my followers would be interested in so that’s the only reason I don’t share everything I read.
#13 – I agree with the reason people put you on a list. It’s pretty obvious to me when people add me that’s for sure. I’ll even get an email letting me know they did and they’re asking me to share it. Then I go over there and I’m just listed like so many others. Those lists don’t impress me either and it depends on what the post is about whether or not I’ll share it even. I wish people would stop doing that but I’ll be rooting for you Mitch that you get added to more lists this year.
#14 – Not sure how much nicer I can be this year but I will admit that I do not participate in social issues. I stand very strongly with my beliefs and my opinions. I’m also online due to business reasons so I don’t want something I’ve said to hurt me in the long run because someone I may be doing business with in the future doesn’t believe the way I do. I know what you’re going to say, you probably don’t want to do business with them. That may or may not be true but I don’t want something like that to get in the way of what could potentially be a very good business decision for me down the road. It’s like arguing about religious beliefs. To me there is no argument because I believe the way I believe and nothing anyone else says will ever change that. That’s how a lot of social issues are as well.
#15 – I definitely agree with your reasoning here Mitch. Even if you are using your blog for business reasons you still should enjoy it because it’s helping people and that’s what we should all want to be doing. I know this blog is more personal and some business as well but I think you know what I mean. Anything we do in life period should be enjoyable. I would hope that blogging, sharing content, commenting on blogs and meeting people would all be the enjoyable part. I know it still is for me. Thanks for mentioning me too Mitch, I appreciate that.
Enjoy the end of this new week and have a good weekend. I wish you the best in this new year.
~Adrienne
Great comment Adrienne. I think we have minor disagreements with 12 & 14; very minor.
For #12 I figure anyone connected with me on Twitter has opted for any and everything I might want to share, and I’m not a one trick pony. If I see a news story that I feel more people should know about I’ll share; I don’t worry about staying on one point or so. Course, I’m sure it might turn some people off but there’s a heck of a lot of people connected to me that have been there for a very long time; that works for me.
For #14, as I wrote I can see that one being a bit scary and dicey for some folks. However, for something like Blog Action Day, the topics are usually pretty innocuous and I can’t imagine that over all the years of topics that anyone could get mad at you for giving an opinion about inequality, human rights, the power of “we”, food or poverty, some of the previous topics they’ve had. If they do… well, I’m not sure I’d want to deal with those folks anyway but I’m like that. 🙂
That’s it; no wonder we get along so well. 🙂 Best of 2015 for both of us.
Mitch, I’m with you on responding to comments. At least acknowledge the person whose taken the time to acknowledge you. Second, stop leaving irrelevant comments. If you don’t have any value to add, share the post. Lastly, popups should appear when I hit your site and when I’m about to leave, not when I’m reading. Ugh!
Actually, I hate popups that appear when I get to a site. Not that I like popups at all mind you, but a popup before I’ve had time to see if I like someone’s content will have me leaving immediately without giving it a chance. The irrelevant comments… that’s when I believe people haven’t actually read the article and are just looking for a link. I delete all of those as quick as I can.