You do with your comments!
When I give talks about the value of blogs, I always brag about how active the rain city guide community is, but I hadn’t thought to try quantify it until I saw John Cook’s post this morning.
Over the past 3+ years, we’ve had 30,802 comments from 1,744 posts!
This is an average of over 17 comments for every post! That’s pretty darn impressive!
It’s kind of fun to look back at the posts that have generated the most conversations, so I thought I’d list all the posts that have generated over 100 comments:
- The Fate of Fannie and Freddie by Rhonda
- How Much Home You Can Buy with $17,550 Down by Rhonda
- The Commission-Based Fee Structure: it’s Bad for Buyers by Craig
- Predictions: helpful or counterproductive? by Tim
- Seattle Real Estate – 2008 by Ardell
- Don’t Sign That Listing Contract! by Ardell
- 3 Steps to Understanding Real Estate Commissions by Ardell
- Proposed RESPA Reform by Jillayne
- Sunday Night Stats – King County by Ardell
- Greatest Real Estate Agent in The WORLD by Ardell
- Homeowners in Foreclosure Should Hire an Attorney by Jillayne
- Fed Funds Rate now at 3% by Rhonda
- If You Walk Away, I’ll Walk Away by Jillayne
- Seattle Bubble Says Seattle Markets Going UP! by Ardell
- Linden Home Loans Charged with Bait and Switch Advertising by Jillayne
- Lower Cost Options for Buyers & Sellers of Real Estate by Ardell
- Should You Buy a Short Sale Property? by Ardell
- Mortgage Brokers and Loan Originators Should Support HR3915 by Jillayne
- Deceptive Radio Advertising in Mortgage Lending by Jillayne
- The Flip Side of the Sub-Prime Story by Ardell
- FHA Secure: A Political Power Move Disguised as a Helping Hand to Those in Need by Jillayne
- Buying without an agent by Craig
- Seattle Real Estate Market Conditions by Jillayne
- Countrywide: SuperBad by Jillayne
- Friday’s Rates on a Saturday by Rhonda
- The Problem with Good Faith Estimates by Rhonda
- Subprime Solutions by Jillayne
- MILA shuts down by Jillayne
- This Just In: Zero Interest Loans, at a Cost of Zero, with a Monthly Payment of Zero (APR 0%)* by Jillayne
- Professional Status: Perceptions and Reality by Jillayne
- It’s Friday…Mortgage Rates are unchanged (for now) by Rhonda
- * Short Sales by Jillayne
- 15 Year Mortgage Too Pricey for Normal People by Rhonda
- Is Seattle Bubble Proof? by Ardell
- * Popcorn ceiling removal by Ardell
- There will never be a real estate bubble by Galen
- * 10 Things You Should Know Before Moving to Seattle by Dustin
- A Closing Date without a closing by Craig
- Renovations – Return on Investment by Ardell
- Linkation, Linkation, Linkation by Dustin
* 200+ comments
So much great stuff thanks to the entire RCG community!
Dustin:
Have you thought how much value it might add if a visitor could search the site by commentor?
I have no idea how it would be done, but I know that there are some amazing regular commenters on this site (biliruben, Q-diddy, sniglet, Apella,laxotoscno, etc are some that come to mind), and I would love to be able to search their thoughts by name.
Just a technical thought, for a technical guy….
Hmmm… That’s easy enough for me to do on the backend, but I can’t think of an easy way to open that up to you’all. Let me think on that a bit.
Never in a million years did I think the MILA Shuts Down article would generate as many comments as it did. Lots of emotion drove those comments.
Dustin,
Your unspoken “policy” of responding to people who comment, instead of letting comments pile up like a message board or forum with no sense of “conversation”, is what has made it so.
I don’t think you ever asked us to treat commenters like “guests to our posts” who were speaking with us, but you led by example.
Many other bloggers write and leave, some here do that as well :). But recognizing a person who comments, as if they just walked into the room and spoke with you, is clearly what makes RCG “a community”.
Jillayne: The funny part is that you can never tell which posts will generate the most interest… I’m sometimes stopped at conferences by people who will quote an idea I wrote about and I’m often shocked that people were not only reading what I wrote, but influenced by it! 😉
Ardell,
I hear you that responding to comments is critical, but it’s so darn easy because I really appreciate when someone takes the time to comment on an idea that I had.
Funny story: Way back when I first started RCG, I remember getting three comments in one day and thinking I was on fire! Then I noticed they were all pretty spammy and went to spam sites. I was sooo disappointed and I almost didn’t want to delete them because it was so great to have some action on the site!
I never know which posts are going to receive the most comments when I’m writing them! 😉 I’m often surprised.
Rhonda: While that is the case… there are those times when I write something and just know it is going to stir the pot. but even those are only good for a few dozen comments. It takes something special to break out in the conversation to hit the 100 mark. 🙂
I think I’ll make a comment on the comments at RCG.
Well done all (contributors and commenters alike).
Right back at you Greg! I have you done for about 230 of the 30K comments. 😉
I’d like to add that the general atmosphere of “passionate, articulate civility” contributes to the success of this site.
This is not at all common on many sites that deal with controversial topics. Name calling and sarcasm seem to be the normal “lingua franca” of the blog world, even those with intelligent and literate commenters.
Way to set the tone!
Of course, I can THINK of some sarcastic comments regarding this post…..but, nah!
You better not try to get sarcastic with us Roger!
Dustin, do you know who the most prolific commenters are at RCG?
Nope… but I can look up the number of comments that people have left on the backend. It’d be a manual process to check everyone! And if they didn’t always leave comments using some common characteristic (name, email, URL or IP), then it’d make it much tougher.
Just a great list of writers that create well thought out posts which create lots of thoughtful comments. Nice list Dustin. Sometimes the comments make the post a better discussion for all.
For what it’s worth, I see that most of the long threads deal with the credit crunch and housing downturn. That seems to be a topic with a lot of resonance.
People just aren’t as interested in discussions about how great Puget Sound neighbourhoods are, how to stage homes, wondeful ways to upgrade your home, or other up-beat subjects.
I personally like this site for getting a perspective from industry professionals on bubble subjects.
Maybe you should re-name the site to “Seattle Bubble 2”. 🙂
There is no shortage of topics for real estate and mortgage these days!
Sniglet,
You’re definitely right that the market condition topics tend to generate a ton of comments, but in terms of what people visiting the site are looking for, the backend analytics tells me that market conditions information is only a small portion of what people want.
The vast majority of people coming to RCG are arrive after putting a term in google like moving to seattle, living in seattle, neighborhood terms, short-sale, FHA, etc, and I like to think that the bulk of them get sent to informative posts that go a long way to answering their questions without the need for them to comment.
My comment is less directed at you Sniglet, then a recognition that as much as most bloggers (myself included!) love to write posts that generate lots of comments, they are not necessarily indicative on any given post with how helpful we can be in providing quality real estate information!
Hmm, guess I have a lot of work ahead of me as my most active blog post has 12 comments.
Tony,
I couldn’t find a link to a blog on the site you linked to in your comment.