That said, I haven’t yet figured out how, when, or if it’s best for me to respond to the comments I receive.  Do I respond again with a comment?  Do I email a response?  Do I just read and enjoy the comment and let it go at that?  I don’t want to clutter up the comments section with MORE writing from me, because I’m afraid that’s a little too controling and verbose.  A blog isn’t really supposed to be a discussion board, is it?  I’m imagining the following “blog post, comment from reader, response from me, comment from reader, response, comment, etc.”  Wouldn’t that be a little pretentious?  But sometimes someone asks a question or leaves a comment I just can’t leave unanswered, and I add another comment myself.  Maybe I should write another post answering the question?  I’m still not sure about the etiquette and protocol for this venue.

As for leaving comments on other blogs, I try to do it rarely and usually only if I feel I can really add to the conversation.  It’s kind of strange that I do that since I like to get comments so much myself.  When I comment on someone else’s blog it feels like I’m writing notes in the margins of a copy of a book I borrowed from someone else knowing that the author of the book will also see all my notes.  Again, it comes down to feeling self-conscious about cluttering someone else’s space (whether the author’s or the other readers’) with my writing.  In fact, when I write comments I find myself getting embarrassed about writing too much in a comment and thinking about just sending an email instead.  Do you think most bloggers want comments for validation, no matter the value of the comment to the subject of the post, or do you think they want to get only content-related comments?   I like to get both types of comments on my blog.

I wonder if my comment-leaving habits stem from how I feel about reading comments on other blogs.  I read the comments to find out about the reactions of other readers to a post, to avoid duplicating content in my own comments on the post, and to glean additonal information on a topic.  While the “this is a great blog!” comments are pleasant and could certainly be much worse, there is no content in them to keep me reading.  It doesn’t add to the conversation.  I skim past them hoping that someone else will say something more useful or relevant.  I like to see that other people enjoy what I enjoy, but beyond that it’s valuable to me.

So, if I were writing for a reader like me, does that mean I shouldn’t publish the cheerleading-type comments I receive on my blog?  I don’t think so, unless a post gets a HUGE number of comments.  Doing so would alientate even more readers by making them feel that their comments were unappreciated or inappropriate, which is not the case.  It’s better to read comments of others that aren’t of great value to me than to fear rejection of my own comment.

Beyond my emotional issues with leaving comments, there’s the RSS factor that keeps me from commenting.  Most blogs I follow I read through an RSS feed on Google Reader.  I don’t actually click on to most blog posts at all.  I just read them, enjoy them, and move along.  If I were on the site itself, I think I would leave more comments than I do now.  Assuming most people who read my blog are in the same boat as I am as a reader, if I really wanted to increase the interactiveness of my blog maybe I should change my RSS feed to only include excerpts of each post so that a reader would have to come to my actual site to read the complete post.  But I’m guessing that would decrease my readership volume, which for one reason or another I like to be as big as possible.  I myself rarely follow blogs that have excerpted RSS feeds, and wouldn’t like to do that to my readers either.

I’m sure you’ve all noticed that I have NO inhibitions about writing long posts on my own blog, despite my concerns about writing long comments on someone else’s blog.  I guess if you keep coming back you like it, or at least you don’t mind.  It’s exciting when I occassionally discover that someone likes my blog enough to put me on their blogroll even when I’ve never heard from them.  Thanks to all of you who comment on my blog and to all those readers out there browsing silently (but harmlessly).  I hope I make your day a little better or your load a little lighter with my writing.