When Blog Posts Make You Crack Down On Someone

You know, it’s rare for me to actually get my ire up and bust on someone else’s blog. I may disagree, but for me to actually get angry enough to have to comment and not be my normal, nice self is something entirely different. But I did that last night, and I’m not sorry I did it, especially since it was a guest post. And it’s possible that I was still feeling the effects from having gone through what I did yesterday afternoon, which I talked about on yesterday’s post.


by Tostado Photo via Flickr

I’m not going to say where I commented. What I am going to do is say what irked me to death.

It was a guest post by a guy talking about reasons why he won’t comment on someone’s blog post. Heck, I’ve read a lot of these; I’ve written some myself. Most of the time the reasons make a heck of a lot of sense; this time they were juvenile and immature. What were they?

1. No images or videos.

2. No CommentLuv.

3. Too long.

Period; that’s it. Now, I’ve had some people here say that they don’t like long posts; that’s too bad if you ask me. If a topic is worth it then read the long post. If you don’t care about the topic move on and go read something else. To me that’s the one that others have mentioned that I disagree with but I understand that not everyone speed reads, and some people can go on and on about literally nothing. But just to say your reason for not reading something is because it’s too long… that’s what comic books are for.

The first one, no images or videos… Really, you need an image to get you interested in reading a post? You need a video to entertain you? Are we back in the 30’s and 40’s when every movie that made any money needed to suddenly have a song and dance in the middle of it? Is this Bollywood?

Not everyone wants to take the time to add an image to their posts. I do it in this blog and my local blog, but for my other 3 blogs I only sometimes have an image. Every topic isn’t viable for images. Maybe videos, since YouTube seems to have videos for everything but come in, how often do I want to write a post on leadership or health care and then add some video that “might” pertain to what I’m talking about?

Sorry, but if the subject matter doesn’t seem to generate a need for an image, there won’t be one. If that’s what you need to get you reading, there’s a series of books for you written by a guy named Dr. Seuss. And they’re pretty fun I’ll admit, as I still have many of my books from when I was a child (I actually still go and pull out Go Dog Go from time to time).

By the way, I will add this, just to be fair. If you want some of your posts shared then it’s good to add an image to them, depending on where you want them shared. For instance, if someone wishes to share what you’ve written on Google Plus or Facebook, images work wonders. If you’re hoping they’re sharing them on LinkedIn or Twitter, then images are optional. The first two mediums are boosted by visuals, the last two not so much.

Finally, CommentLuv. If everything else is equal but the thing you don’t want to do is not comment because you’re not going to be able to get credit for your blog for writing a comment, that’s just weak. Yes, I’m a big time CommentLuv fan, one of the early adopters, but for me, if the comment system allows me to leave an unencumbered comment I’m there. I don’t need to have a link coming back to a specific post. I get a link back to my blog for the asking, and that’s good enough for me.

And I’ll even say that I have my own peccadillo’s on commenting, which y’all know. There are certain platforms I refuse to comment on, others I’ll rarely comment on, and I absolutely hate captcha’s. In those cases though, I’m not saying I’m avoiding those blogs because I don’t want to comment; I’m avoiding because I don’t want to have to jump through hoops to comment. Much different than saying I’m not commenting because I’m not getting the benefit I want.

In any case the blog post in question made me lose my mind; I actually wrote a different phrase here, then decided most people wouldn’t understand what it meant and I wasn’t ready to have that discussion. As I disclaimered (that’s a made up word), maybe I was still in a state when I saw that and wasn’t my nice, calm self in commenting, or maybe I felt justified because it was utterly stupid. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that it made me comment, and in a way even if my comment wasn’t nice it’s possible that the objective of the writer was made because it got me to comment.

I don’t know; heck, is this post too long?
 

17 thoughts on “When Blog Posts Make You Crack Down On Someone”

  1. I agree those are bogus reasons. I enjoy both long and short posts. It’s all about the topic. I like images sure, but that doesn’t makeup for weak content. The commentluv comment is just terrible. It your only goal is to push your blog your comment are probably not genuine.

    However, I do like commentluv, because I like to visit people who visit me and it makes it easy to visit their latest post.

    1. Thanks Southpaw. You know, tongue and cheek it might have been a funny post but it wasn’t either one of those things. You’re absolutely correct on all of it, and I’m a big supporter of CommentLuv; always have been.

  2. Working backwards. No your post isn’t too long AND you included a picture 😉

    I try to add photos but sometimes it simply doesn’t work. I understand they can be good for people with very low literacy IF you can make the caption support the longer text.

    I write long posts, and make no apologies or excuses for that. If people don’t like them they don’t have to stay.

    The three points seem like this person simply wants to be entertained. They come across as dismissive and self-centred and I doubt I’d want to visit their blog if I’d read that.

    1. Thanks Sue. It looked like the work of a spoiled kid and I didn’t like the post one bit. Course, sometimes I just ignore posts like that, but since it was on the blog of someone I like, I felt I had to say something.

  3. You could have included a video. You could have played Ya’ll gonna make me lose my mind up in here, up in here. LOL You know I had to do it. Seriously though, those are really lame reasons not to comment on someone’s blog.

  4. You’re right man, the availability of suitable images really depends on the subject matter. Sometimes it can be tough, and throwing in an abstract image could confuse people.

    If he just wanted images to break up the text, well that can be done with judicious styling of headers.

    I’ll be honest, most of the time I’m glad if there’s not a video. Those take up my time more than reading -and I read pretty fast. I hate when the video is all there is and there’s no supplemental text. Although I understand I’m in the minority here.

    Anyway, his listed reasons kind of let you know what he’s in it for. I mean, we’re all out to get our names out there, but I won’t leave just because there’s no commentluv, lol.

    Half the blogs I comment on these days are LiveFyre and Disqus wit no commentluv anyway.

    Hopefully he will re-think his reasoning and cut folks some slack lol.

    1. Same here my man. I mean, we all get the links anyway if we put our URL into that box, and though it doesn’t cover a specific post it’s something. And images… well, even stupid images might be cool, but I didn’t really put images on this blog for, what, 2 years or so, and on my business blogs images don’t always fit. Oh well, I’m not as mad now as I was when I wrote this. lol

  5. Hi Mitch, I read the post you are referring to a couple of weeks ago so I went back and found your comment. I don’t think the comment was inappropriate at all. As bloggers/writers we leave ourselves open to all types of responses; that’s the nature of the business.

    I do agree with you and didn’t even finish the post when I originally read it. It just wasn’t worth my time; just that post, the blog overall is top notch and I really admire the owner and consider her a friend.

    Images are something I recommend to bloggers in general but, like you said, they are not always necessary. I use them for obvious reasons but they can truly be a pain and a real time waster.

    As far as the CommentLuv statement he made, that’s just ridiculous. Just like the no-follow argument, that’s people commenting just for links and that’s shameful. It’s not just shameful, it’s stupid. If that blogger understood how little benefit we gain from commenting, he’d never read a post. One visit to his blog is all it takes to see he has a lot to learn about blogging, not that it isn’t obvious reading his post.

    1. You know Brian, I didn’t even think about going to check out his blog to see what it was all about. And that’s probably the major failing of his guest post. I wonder if all those people who agreed with him were being truthful, and if so if they really followed him back to his blog and enjoyed what they read. No matter; it was just silly stuff.

  6. 80% of blog posts are filled with that kind of information. I think most guest bloggers throw something because have been paid or just to submit something without even putting a bit of common sense.

    1. Carl, it was one of the worst written guest posts I’ve ever seen. The concepts looked stupid, and the explanation for those concepts were wrong also.

      1. It doesn’t necessary need to be technically correct as soon as evidence seems to be ok, that’s why I mentioned in my comment that 80% of bloggers are writing that kind of content.

  7. Strong thought about blog post commenting you have there. I guess comment not just to build backlink, but also to build network, connections and friends. I agree with your statement of not leaving a comment, if you didn’t find any value on it, cause I did too.

    Best wishes,

    Verdi

    1. Verdi, to me blogging is about community and networking, not necessarily to get backlinks to your site. That’s always nice, but there are better reasons to decide not to comment on blogs than those.

  8. I read that post too Mitch and your comment. They were completely off base and it sounded more juvenile than anything else. My assumption was that he just started his blog or hasn’t been around long enough to appreciate all types of blogs in all formats, rather than looking for ways to self-promote.

    Images are very important, but CommentLuv is simply a perk. What did we use before that plugin came along? Nothing, and it still worked regardless without the benefits CommentLuv provides. I see many blogs not use it and they still get hundreds of comments daily, but that wouldn’t derail me from commenting because people can’t see my latest blog post.

    I left a not so nice comment myself, but I applaud you for speaking your mind. Besides, he did ask for our opinion.

    Well said Mitch…as usual you crack me up!

    1. Thanks Sonia. You were much nicer than I was in your post; I need to learn that from time to time. lol And that’s the thing, what this guy was saying was overly selfish and childish; made no sense at all.

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