Just Get On With It!
Oh, if there's one thing I learned about as a writer it's to cut the throat clearing.
What's throat clearing?
Excessive backstory before getting to the meat of the story.
The same should go for your blog posts.
Every. Single. One. Of. Them.
I just had a SiteComment disapproved in the SiteComments section.
First one in over a month.
The reasoning?
The author of the post accused me of failing to read the content and stated I delivered a weak response clearly off topic.
Okay, what?
This is a WA review, right?
I probably read about 3/4 of the article, so I'll admit guilt that I didn't read the whole thing, but at this point, the post was clearly in everyone's sane eyes a WA review.
Turns out it was a review of the Affiliate Programs tab.
Only the author just touches up on it before saving the penultimate section to actually get to the meat of the post.
As a writer, I cringed.
Well, this experience should teach a few things;
1) If anyone writes this way, you'll lose readers if you don't get ot the point within seconds, such as before your first sub-topic.
2) Don't rehash redundant subtopics, such as the training, Jaaxy, etc, especially if the post isn't about this.
3) Don't deviate from the main topic.
If I'm writing an article about, say, helmet rankings, I'm not going to throat clear as to how pretty an NFL team's overall uniform is and get to the meat of the post halfway through.
Heck, I probably just lost readers expecting helmet rankings and instead I'm talking about uniforms.
We all want our blogs to succeed, but to do so means grabbing your reader by the throat (figuratively) and never letting go from the first sentence. Talk about your topic from the first word, and trim the fat off that meat; in other words stay on topic from beginning to end.
Especially in SiteComments, where a reader is going to just click out and comment on what they'd read to that point, and with product reviews we've seen A THOUSAND times, it's likely going to be an identical comment.
Be clear, from sentence one, what your article is going to talk about.
Find a long-tail keyword phrase and give me 1,000 words on ONLY that keyword phrase.
If not, you're going to lose A LOT of readers and you'll be left making false accusations toward others' integrity of actually reading the article.
Again, I should've read the whole thing; but I've read about twenty product reviews this entire weekend, with about five of them being WA reviews.
If you make it clear that it's a review of something within the site, maybe you'll hold your reader throughout the post.
Recent Comments
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I totally agree with you on site comments. Just the other day I made a comment on site comments platform and one of the comments was disapproved. When I read the article, it was talking about different things other than what the topic is about and not sticking to the keyword. This is why is so important that you always stick with the topic throughout the article everytime.Otherwise, people will not get it and write comments to suit and as a blogger you should get feedback on your blogs before asking people for site comments. After all, it is just engagement. Your reader base (page views) from visitors is what matters.That's all I got to say.
You didn't do anything terribly wrong. In fact, in Site Comments, Kyle's instructions say read or skim through the article to offer insightful comments, Notice the word skim.
People are just seriously picky when they really shouldn't be. Google doesn't give any amount of crap what comments say. Readers rarely read the comment section. Comments just prove it's engaging the audience and Google likes engagement. Google doesn't care about the content of such engagement. Any decent comment is helpful. As long as it's an honest comment, who gives a crap what the comment says?
Some people just like to think super high-quality comments are way better than the organic visitor's one line comments when honestly, they really don't matter much. You can turn off the comments on a blog and still rank excellently.
I don't get my comments rejected often, but sometimes, because I express myself honestly, and that isn't what they want. I got one rejected for being too 'general' and summarizing what they wrote.
I was basically telling them what I liked about the article... so of course, I was putting points in they wrote. Comments aren't supposed to ADD to your post. Your post should stand on its own. Comments shouldn't add ANY content to your posts. That's just silly.
They want people who are pretending interest in buying, or knowledge on the subject, or people who've had experience. They're trying to influence things by having specific types of comments. But my opinion on the topic is also okay, though people don't seem to understand that. It is one of the options you can ask for, people's opinions. NOWHERE does Kyle say to lie about your opinion or fake crap. I don't get negative, but I can be positive and honest, or politely disagree about liking a product by expressing skepticism.
And skimming an article is perfectly acceptable. You do that in real blogs you read, yes? I do. And as long as a comment is relevant, it doesn't matter.
I had never heard of the term throat clearing before. It is one that I will remember after reading this post.
You have made a very valid point. Thank you for the reminder that it is important that the title should reflect the point of the post. After a brief introduction, we should get to the main point of the post. The rest of the article should be supporting the post's main point.
I hope the author of the website that you are referring will take the time to read this. If they will accept the feedback; it should improve their writing in the future.
I agree, Sondra. I once read a book called 'Hooked' by Les Edgerton, and the entire content of the book focused on that very first line. If we take the time and make our first line engaging, our reader will have no choice but to continue on.
And yes, use as many supporting details regarding the subject of the article and we will find readers.
I hope they do, too, because when I read the 'Disapproval' message I was so taken aback I immediately went back to the article to see what I missed. Turns out I just made the mistake of clicking out too early, as going back through the article I didn't find my 'miss' until as I stated, about 3/4 of the way down the post.
I'll have to see if I can find that book. Writing effectively is an important skill in this business.
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I agree with you. Site comments has its problems. You have encountered one. I think rather than disapproving our comments, the person should delete them and note why they are deleted. Then at least we don't drop our comment ranking lower if we make a comment that is disapproved.
I hesitate to give comments any more. The last one I gave, I read the whole review...I always go back and look a couple more times to clarify...and I left my comment based on what I'd read. It was not very original but it was accurate. However, the person did not think it was good enough to keep. If they had just deleted it and let me know why, I'd have understood. As it is, I got rather irked and decided I may not do any more site comments.