Cross-Blog Conversations: Getting off the Soap Box is Messy .. but ...

Source: Skelliewag

David Wilcox has an excellent post about generating conversation on blogs or for that matter other social media tools.  In fact, I discovered his post via Facebook where I left a comment on his note and followed the links to his blog post.   

It caught my eye for two reasons:  I'm a visual person - so any visual communication of an idea I'm drawn to.   The other reason is that I'm prepping for a couple of conference sessions on Social Media Metrics and one of the areas to consider is "conversation index" - more on that later.

David's post has lots think about.   His questions are:

• How can blog conversations foster a cloud and not just a hub and spokes effect?
• How might these conversations filter across into face-to-face, Facebook, and MSM (main stream media)?

David points over to colleague Michele Martin's post "How to Facilitate Conversation Between Comments on Our Blogs?"  Michele analyzes her own commenting behavior and why sometimes she responds to the blogger, not necessarily the other commenters.   She is thinking deeply about how to encourage a blogging community.  She ends her post with: So, how do you encourage interactions with commenters on your blog? How do you interact with other commenters when you comment on someone else's blog?

I'm very interested in this and Michele and the commenters to this post offered some excellent advice:

Michele's suggestions:
1.  Make it clear in your commenting policy that you encourage commenters to interact with one another.
2.  Have some commenters modeling the behavior--responding directly to other commenters as a way to encourage that kind of interaction.

Skelliwag commenters:
3.  Using threaded commenting so that you could reply more easily to individual commenters, similar to replies in a forum.
4.  Posting on problems to solve that will invite readers to interact with one another in developing the solution (obviously this doesn't work for every post).
5.  Trying to create a culture that encourages commenter to commenter interactions through your own responses in the comments section--maybe by drawing the attention of one commenter to the thoughts of another.

Michele's commenters:
6. Using features that allow people to sign up to receive comments via email from other commenters (Via Laura's Notebook)
7. Threading/Cross-linking comments (via Atul)
8. Co-Comment can be a good tool to track commenting for participation/cross conversation (Christy Tucker)
9. Ask leading questions that encourage dialogue between two commentors, but will people come back? (Christy Tucker)
10.  Look at blogs that have a lot of cross commenting conversation (Making Light at http://www.nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ and The Whatever at http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/.)  Is the reason age of blog or volume of readers?  (Lisa Juniker)

The Intensity of Sharing

Flickr Photo by Lynnetter

 

The comment about whether or not people will come back to for cross-commenting made me think of this chart that illustrates the intensity and intent of sharing - comments are sharing - an opinion or a voice.  Something to think about when we look at whether we've generated commenting.

This conversation is reminding of one that I had on this blog or rather across several blogs about "cross-blog conversation."   One of the key learnings was:

• The community must have some sort of nurturing structure for bloggers who are new to blogging or the conversation has no where to go and the community no where to grow.

Relating this back to the cross conversation within blog post thread, there is the technique of weaving.  I've attempted to do it here - summarize what was said in the comments and put into a new a post.

This conversation was about generating community around your blog in the comments and encouraging cross commenter conversation, but I'm also interested in the idea of conversations across blogs or for that matter across social networking sites?   

Comments

[Michele Martin]

Hi Beth--I like the intensity of sharing graphic--very helpful way to think about this stuff. I just wrote a follow-up post on this because as we discussed it further it led right back to your final question about generating community and discussion across blogs and social networks. Ideally there would be some way to automatically aggregate relevant blog posts, tweets, Facebook comments, forum posts, etc. because we're increasingly having conversations across many different platforms. Technology-wise, I haven't seen anything to do this--or am I missing something?

I still think that there's a definite place for a weaver in all of this--in fact, that may be where we as bloggers add the most value--doing the heavy lifting for other people to pull together those various strands.

[Laura Whitehead]

Hi Beth, I too have been following the articles by David, Michele and now you too about this - and all creating conversation too! Going back to Michele's comments above, what Michele is possible seeking is a way to pull the bits all together across the different networks/blogs/etc... You can use something known as a 'Mashup'. I've begun to explore potential uses in nptech world a bit, for some ideas for a project being planned hopefully for next year. A really nice simple explanation about mashups can be found at http://mashupawards.com/create/.
You could then pull in your wider 'global' conversations together from a variety of sources.
(Sorry if I've got too geeky here, have tried not to be!)

Weaving is essential too, we're all interpreting similar themes through different voices, from being inspired by others, which then creates conversation and participation and a community.

[Atul Sabnis]

Hello Beth, interesting take there regarding the 'intensity of sharing'. Food for thought, I must say. I am now motivated to create an info-graphic of my own!

Also, if you could please point my link to http://kenfinity.wordpress.com. The link you have now, is my personal site. Thanks!

[Beth Kanter]

@Michelle There is a site/wiki about network weavers some place. I'll have to dig it up. Presently, I only know about human who do this cross site aggregation.

@Laura Can't wait to see your mashup!

@atul ooooh ... can't wait to see your drawing. Will change the link.

[Nina Simon]

This is a question I've been grappling with as well. I think the real challenge here is striking a balance where you both have the authority/strength of voice to draw people in AND the humility and editorial ability to condense that into as few words as possible. I love the suggestion of a problem to be solved by commenters because that incentivizes each of us to express ourselves (hopefully as uniquely and interestingly as the initial poster). Instructables does this well. But on most blogs, few commenters have as strong a persona as the blogger, write shorter, less well-thought out posts, and generally have fewer aspects that make their personness as compelling and clear as the blogger.

I've been running an experiment (blogged by Beth here) with a software called voicethread, which allows people to comment on images with their own voice. I've been surprised by both the relative level of participation and the extent to which people respond to each other. I think the personal power of an individual's voice helps frame the experience as a conversation rather than a lecture. But this is still only a partial solution that doesn't allow for threaded discussion. I'd love to hear what other tools people are using to encourage cross-commenter interaction in this way.

[Atul Sabnis]

Thank you Beth, the infographic (if you can call it that) is up! Let me know what you think!

[bryan kennedy]

We have also been experimenting with this on our museum blog, Science Buzz. We are specifically interested in hosting conversations between visitors but with physical visits to the museum tied into the mix as well. We are getting real excited to see situations where comments on specific posts are diverging into discussions between visitors, sometimes off-topic from the original post. In these situations I think "off-topic" is maybe even a good sign. I'm not sure how to encourage all of this yet and it's especially hard to track but thanks for posting these tips.