( Three to Four minute read)

The world is awash with Social Media embedded with algorithms to the extent that everything heard or read is an opinion, not a fact, everything we see is a perspective of the truth.

I’m a huge fan of reader interaction but how are you supposed to decide what to do with the comments on your own blog?

We’ve got countless video calling apps, messaging apps, photo sharing apps etc. Apps may come and go, but the medium of communication is here to stay. It has impacted all of our lives in different ways, and we can no longer imagine a world without social media.

We don’t have to just communicate with someone face-to-face to tell them about the latest gossip.

In fact social media helped us to raise our voice about issues and be heard by millions across the globe. In doing so it is killing any fragment of privacy in our life. On the other hand it has helped us spread awareness about a million different things.

No vile act can go unpunished anymore.

We can all agree on one point- it has had an impact on all of our lives.

It has its advantages and disadvantages.

It has provided a platform for anyone to post anything, which is a means to influencing people.

Influencing someone is a big power and nowadays, an issue can be resolved through the support of millions of strangers on the internet who feel like your cause is worth supporting. Petitions on the internet have become a huge thing for people who want change but can’t bring it about themselves.

Gone are the days when politicians only stood up on a dais and shouted their poll promises.

People no longer only look to news houses to update them with information. A simple search on Twitter about the issue can give you much more information about it than news houses. Now, however, with the social media, people can immediately seek relief by posting about it.

Social media has given a platform to share practically everything.

The fact is, today’s social environment is a digital one.

There is no doubt that social media plays an intricate part in the lives of many people. There are more than 2.3 billion active social media accounts in the world.

This means that more than 30 percent of the world’s population is using sites like Facebook and Twitter regularly.

Many disasters like floods, earthquakes or terror attacks have garnered attention on social media and have gotten support from millions across the world. Facebook came up with the ‘safe’ option which lets you update your loved ones that you are safe and secure after the disaster.

If someone tells they have been someplace and there is no evidence of it on their social media, did it really happen?

Social media has definitely shown us that it is here to stay.

Connecting to the Internet, see what’s new around, search for new ideas waiting for funding in Kick starter.

It has become the norm of the society, and will probable go down in history as the fetish that broke democracy. 

Opinion use to be held by individuals with little or no effect other than expressed it in private conversations or written books or articles, (with a limited audience) they have now turned into bush fires that are spread by comments on Internet platforms, doing immense damage to two aspects life:  Privacy and Accountability.

For example:

If Trump’s opinion tweets in any way reflected actual US policy, we would be in serious trouble. It’s impossible to suggests that Trump’s tweets don’t cause substantial damage in and of themselves.

However is it the comments that he attracts with his opinion that are causing the damage.

(We can’t change who he is, but we can use Social Media to get rid of him.)

Or

This week:  Catalonia’s separatist government staged a referendum on leaving Spain – against the wishes of the national authorities. Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont says the Spanish region has won the right to statehood following a contentious referendum that was marred by violence.

Or

The mess England finds its self in due to baseless untrue comments concerning immigration, loss of Sovereignty etc.

For many people, including myself, something changed when we saw the Britons wanting to leave the EU. They have already forgotten what life was like without the EU and its freedoms.

So when it comes to the value of comments, one blog may have tons of comments with little traffic, whereas another blog may have tons of traffic with little comments.  However you can rest assured that all comments are being monitored by Big brother who is always watching for key whether they be relevant or not.

Comments are not a reliable indicator of blog traffic.

The Question is are they data-driven decisions– are comments generating revenue for unseen Algorithms?

Comments are sometimes shallow pitches for back links or marketing.

Another words there is no correlation between the number of comments on a post and the number of links that post gets.

Do blog comments lead to more traffic?

Almost no one clicks through to your blog via comments.

If you go to Google Analytics:  26.7% of the keywords that are ranked in Google are most likely to come from the comments section.

It could be that Google may not be placing as much value on text created through comments or words appearing lower on a page (since comments are located below each blog post) as it does on the post itself.

The theory is that the more blog comments you have, the more content you’ll have on each page, and the more keywords you should rank for, which should increase your overall search traffic.

Who comments on blogs?

Random people on the Internet.

Lackluster comments like “Great Post, ‘me too!’ ‘you’re awesome!’ These types of comments, with like clicks definitely do not add value to a post.

The assumption is that on hot topics, like climate change, readers already come to the article with preconceived notions, and thus the civility of the comments would have no effect on them – they are already polarized.

However, it takes more than just having a social profile to get people to follow your blog post.

For instance, Tweets between 71 and 100 characters have a 17 percent higher engagement rate. Facebook posts with approximately 40 characters are 86 percent more likely to engage fans as opposed to longer pieces. The most popular YouTube videos are less than three minutes long.

In fact, Facebook Groups experienced more than 25 billion “likes” within the posts on the group platform in 2015.

Social posts that include imagery have a higher engagement rate by 650 percent than just plain text.

There are more than 313 million active users on Twitter each month. It accounts for almost 30 percent of all social media traffic on the Internet.

Recently I received a comment:

That pointed out that I had a grammar error in the opening paragraph of a post. The comment went on to express his or her opinion, encouraging others not to read the post.

After considering whether I should approve or delete the comment I decided to remove it.  Perhaps I should responded ( “Criticizing minutia points in my posts that didn’t matter — “do you have a toothbrush? syndrome”.)

Our attention is our most valuable commodity, and with unlimited channels competing for it, we’re in a dire situation if we don’t put some emphasis into where our attention falls.

Do we want to ask our readers to commit time and energy to commenting on blogs all over the Net when we know for certain that their focus is best spent creating worlds of their own for the digital future?

It is becoming increasingly obvious as time goes on that comments are being screened. Follow us on Facebook/ Twitter.

Genuine Commentators have most definitely increased the value of my posts and I can’t even fathom the idea of not letting their voice become a part of my posts.

So is there a value to comments particularly when you are inundated by tons of spammy or low-quality comments?

As a blogger I feel it is my duty to reply.

My view is no.

However, I ask you to leave your comments whenever you want. I’m not looking for high ratings or views.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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