Tell Me Something Tuesday: Do You Comment Altruistically Or With Specific Intent?

Tell Me Something Tuesday is a weekly discussion post hosted by Rainy Day Ramblings where a wide range of topics from books to blogging are discussed. Weigh in and join the conversation by adding your thoughts in the comments. If you want to do your own post, grab the question and answer it on your blog.

This week's discussion question is:

First off, I'd like to say that I promise I'm not just saying this to sound 'good' when I say that, in general, I do altruistically. Let me explain. (This might be long, you are forewarned.)

Way back before I was a part of the booklr community, I didn't comment. On anything. Ever. I was either too shy, felt that I had nothing good to say, or just didn't really want to bring attention to myself. I figured any comment I posted would be met with snide remarks, argumentative comments, or would just be completely lost and therefore irrelevant. I'm a quiet person and I don't generally voice my thoughts that often. (I know that my sound odd coming from someone who runs a blog based on sharing my views... but trust me, I still struggle with it!) And this goes further than the internet: I don't even like to ask questions in class - in fact, I avoid it if at all possible. I've always thrived on being an observer.

But then one day I joined the booklr community. I started a blog, started meeting some people. And I also realized that this community thrives from comments. That without comments, many discussions wouldn't exist! That pretty much every book blogger I've come across genuinely appreciates each and every comment that they receive. So I took a deep breath and I started commenting.

I started posting small agreements with reviews on great books or expressed my own interest in something. And suddenly, somehow, I started getting more comments in return. It was so exciting! And that's when I realized that in order to generate my own comments and discussions, I had to give my own thoughts and opinions, but that isn't where I decided to focus my attention, because realizing that connection then made it truly click for me how important commenting is. So now I try to comment as much as possible, whenever I can. Sometimes that means more than ten comments a day, and sometimes that means only three comments a week. I love reading and reacting to posts, and I don't even care if people return the favor on my blog at this point. (And... get ready for this... I've started commenting with disagreements or comments that don't completely agree with something a blogger said, and guess what? It's been fine! It sparks more discussion and I get to meet even more people.)

Basically, what I'm trying to say is that commenting is fun, meaningful, and incredibly important. It lets you connect and talk to new people in the community, and it's worth every minute you spend crafting a response, and although I love finding comments given in return, I don't expect them. It's hard to keep up with commenting - I fall weeks behind in responding to some of the ones posted on mine, so I hardly expect others to take the time to add a comment to my own blog.

So now I pose the same question to you: Do you comment on other blog posts because you genuinely just enjoy commenting and supporting bloggers, or do you hope for some comments in return? (There's no harm in either!)

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