How do you beat the lurker factor ? Got 1000-1500 uniques a month. Feels like two people.
Google Analytics tells me I have 1000-1500 unique users a month. But it feels like I'm talking to myself.
Am I boring people to death ?
Am I boring people to death ?
10 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 34.0 ms ] threadWe get about 40,000 visitors a month, and have only a couple hundred unique posters during the same period. Participating users are always significantly less common than lurkers.
Of course, you might have more friction preventing participation than you should. Is your signup process crappy? If you ask more than two or three questions (username, password, optional email address), then your signup process is crappy and needs to be fixed. Do you require all posts to parse a CAPTCHA? Once during signup is probably enough--it's certainly enough until you have a spam problem to deal with. Do you make people agree to a long "terms of service"? Unless you really plan to enforce it in court, don't make folks click through...just include it on the site somewhere so you can point to it when you want to revoke someone's post privileges and need a fair reason to do so.
And, maybe you are boring people to death. I don't know, and couldn't help if you were. Just keep working on improving your site, making it sticky so people stick around and tell their friends about it, provide good content so that search engines send people your way, etc.
People like my software, but are probably bored to tears by my web presence. And therefore I get very few comments on my blog. I was hoping for more info so I can tune my software. Maybe I have to build in some social stuff into the main website ?
A blog is just not useful to the vast majority of your users (or, even if it is, they are not investing the time to read it). Our product website gets, as I mentioned, 40k visitors per month...our blog gets about 2000. Our forums are very active, because they provide a mechanism for people to get help and talk about their problems and goals. People love to talk...but it sounds like you're wanting them to only talk to you (because commenting on a blog feels like talking to one person--talking to a forum feels like talking to the world), when what they really want is a range of experiences.
The blog thing is great. It has tripled my traffic and 25 percent of incoming users are now from search engines.
there are tons of great resources for blogging that will give you ideas on how to get participation on your posts.
i'd suggest checking out problogger or something similar for ideas.
It certainly supports that your experience is common, and more importantly gives you a framework to improve (ie, make 'Groupies' 'Doers', and 'Doers' 'Stars').
Don't expect people to chime in in a reaction to a specifically popular or unpopular opinion. "Me too" and "Screw you", despite their popularity in popular spots, are no fun to write and won't be written, even if strongly felt, in an empty room. Expressing a unique, rare, and non-antagonistic opinion, and then asking for others, is more likely to get reactions than "I like music, do you like music?" or "Taxes suck, am I right?"
Also, invite pride. If people have profiles or pages, let them create something that they can point others too. Allow for long, weird contributions.