As a blogger I appreciate comments. One of the things I have been working for on my blog is to get reaction from readers. My journey to comments has been long,slow and rewarding.
As I said before I started Hiawatha House before I was on the Internet. My daughter helped me establish Hiawatha House in Aug. of 2008. A few weeks later she left and I blogged from the computers in the local library. I think I made three posts in 2008. I had the naive notion that if I put something on the Internet thousands of people would automatically see and read my posts. I knew there were comments but somehow I wasn't getting any comments.
In Mar. of 2010 I hooked up to the Internet at my house. This meant that I could look at blogger and begin setting up the blog. There were many things I didn't understand. I didn't know what a URL was . I was able to write a few more posts. As I wrote I learned a few things about how to change the look of the blog. Still no comments.
Someone told me about counters and that it was simple to put a counter on your blog. After much puzzling a finally got a counter on my blog. I found out that very few people were reading my blog. One guy seemed to read me several times a day. It turned out that my biggest reader was me! So I got rid of myself. Still no comments. I didn't know where the comments would appear on the blog!
I then discovered that I could follow other bloggers. I found a few interesting blogs to follow but they seemed to be blogs that didn't post very often and were probably struggling beginning bloggers like myself. They didn't respond as they were like myself and I didn't make comments on other blogs.
Somewhere in early 2010 someone commented on a post . I was amazed. Then I had to find out how to publish the comment. That comment made me work harder. I learned so much from the one comment. I should go back and find out who made the first comment.
Some where out of the blue a couple of people who were not my friends began to follow my blog and make comments. These comments really were encouraging and made me think more about my blog and the things I was posting.
In the last half of 2010 I began to post more material and more people began to comment. Well, I got a couple of comments a week! I also learned that I had to follow more bloggers.
So by 2011 I was getting comments on every post. What a treat! You get feed back about what you write. Comments confirm that what you are saying has some value. Comments also give you many more ideas for writing topics. Comments also give me confidence to go on and try harder. Sometimes you have regular readers who comment all the time. Some times people appear from out of the blue. Many of my readers are locals and they comment orally when they see me. I have a large family and occasionally one of them comment but I discuss my blog with them often.
Comments...What a treat! Thanks to all those people who drop by and leave a comment. Thanks to all those people who drop by and read Hiawatha House. You are very much appreciated.
