Warning – This post is the culmination of several different thoughts & ideas, spurred on by a single Tweet.
Being new to both woodworking and blogging, I’ve been wondering how to get both more traffic to my blog and how to get more involved with the growing online community of woodworkers. I take part of that back – I’m not interested in raw numbers of visits, unique users, or page views. I don’t have any banner ads, referral programs, or an online store. To be honest, I’d rather have 10 people who visited and commented on a regular basis than have 100 unique IPs view my homepage.
They key to this desire is that I know I’m not the only one. Many of the woodworking blogs I visit seem to have a similar level of participation. I know for a fact another woodworking blogger does feel this way – Stuart Lees over at StusShed had this tweet earlier – “How do you get reader participation in comments?” I replied to him that I wish I knew the answer, which in turn inspired my writing this blog post.
I understand how much community interaction can drive creativity and growth. In fact, a post by Tom Iovino over at Tom’s Workbench was the impetus for me to starting to write here. So here is my personal goal and my challenge to all those who read or write woodworking related blogs:
Comment. Comment everywhere. The blogroll on my site isn’t just a list of blogs I could find, it is a list of woodworking blogs I check on an almost daily basis. I enjoy reading them, but how many more posts would there be if I commented? I know that I would post more often if I knew I had a group of people who were checking in daily for updates. So I’m going to be a vocal member of that group of people for the other blogs out there. So for the next month (through Labor Day in the US), I’ll be commenting on every new post at the woodworking blogs I follow.
Imagine the woodworking community we can build if we all participate like this. I know I wouldn’t mind the comments 
Commenting on every post on each of the sites you read – sure sounds like a massive commitment, but then as you say, if we all did it, the interlinking that it would create would be something to behold.
In fact, if you drive back through the annuals of blogging history, that is how the early networks grew and survived at all – bloggers talking with other bloggers, back and forth. Google and other search engines also love that sort of thing, particularly when they are articles linking to other articles.
This will be an interesting experiment – keep track of your site’s metrics (and I’ll do the same), and we’ll see what works!
I’ll definitely keep track of the metrics, although I won’t have much to compare to, given this blog’s infancy.
Thanks for dropping by!
That is exactly how people found my blog–by comments I made on others’ blogs. I believe your experiment will work very well!
Indeed – this is a great way to get your name out there. Be sure to not just post “Hey, that’s cool” – be insightful and you’ll quickly gain a reputation…
this is exactly how I found my way on to blogs that are now mainstream and popular that weren’t back when I first began my click thru’s! …I’d like to think my cooking improves with each blog I discover through another blogger’s comments or posts!
This not only improves traffic to your site it also gives you backlinks you need to improve your rating with Google. The better your rating, the more traffic you get and so on… It would be nice to build a woodworking community that is connected thru blogs. We all have ideas and woodworking tips worth sharing. I’m always discovering new ideas on the blogs I read.
Hi Tom … i have been writing for almost two years now … it’s sort of a hobby for me, sort of a diary, and sort of a way to write things down for my boys who are both working with me in my business. The commenting thing is a mystery to me too. I run into people around town and they tell me they read my posts but … no comment. The few times I have had thoughtful comments, they have been stimulating, and as you say make it worthwhile. So, have at it with your commenting, good luck, and I’ll try to do my share … Thanks …dan
Surprising comment here … http://dorsetcustomfurniture.blogspot.com/2008/11/art-deco-macassar-ebony-cabinet.html
I agree , i been writing and doing all sorts of stuff for about 2 years as well….i am amazed at the number of viewers we get , but the lack of participation, discussion, you are correct more inter action makes it much more worth while, but in this world folks are usually too busy, or simply feel their input is irrelavent , they are wrong, the sharing of thoughts and ideas is called education, and thats what makes the world go around, maybe this post will encourge more to participate…thanks for a great blog , as always
What a great blog today, I can tell you that we did not start our journey with a blog, (didn’t even know what a blog was!), we started by sharing info via video on youtube, Charles has been blogging a year now and it always amazes us how few comments are left on the blog but the stats are pretty good. Sometimes I feel like we beg for comments….but it’s not the number of comments, its that we grow with feedback and we are able to see that our efforts make a difference. Sometimes, our blog goes days with no comments at all, not even from the regulars, and then we get that phone call like the other day, from a NYC Firefighter who tells us that he has followed woodworking for years, set up a fantastic shop and continued to study every book, video, forum, blog and so on, but…until he ran across Charles’ videos on youtube and started reading his blog daily, he didn’t really have confidence in himself that he could actually woodwork. He told us that since discovering our site he has built three really nice pieces over the past six months and now has the confidence to get in the shop and work the wood instead of dream about it. That’s worth a million comments, but…..we still check for the comments on the blog and our forum daily. This gentleman has never left a comment, so even when the comments are empty, you still reach them.