Thing #4

Commenting helps create a sense of community and interaction by allowing others, usually friends, family, co-workers, etc to share their opinion on the issue being discussed.  A community is made of people you love and value; commenting reciprocates their love and value for the blogger.

Commenting is important because it shows the blog author they are being heard. By responding to comments on your blog, you show your appreciation of your followers and if the comment is substantive it may enlighten your views on your initial blog.  Most people blog because they feel they have something important to say and they want to be heard and share their thoughts on the situation.  Commenting proves to them that they really are being heard.

I selected the following blogs to read and comment on:  Meagan Artz, Matthew Ciezki, Sarah LaBean, Michelle Carpenter, Brittany Menees, the LA Times Local Blog, and Mommalicious-Striving For Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder.  I chose each of these because I could relate to their blog, they had a cool avatar, or the topic being discussed was of great interest to me.

I commented on Meagan’s blog because she had an awesome idea of posting upcoming school events on her educator blog and I wasn’t familiar with this technique for parent/teacher communication.  Matthew had the cutest avatar that really does look like him; even more so, he writes like he is having a live conversation with you and makes his information interesting, easy to follow, and funny.  I could relate to Sarah’s fear of learning the unknown and wanted to give her the comfort of knowing she was not alone.  I had to comment on Michelle…The woman is a black belt martial artist and will now be a teacher, which I feel will be an inspiration to all her students.  Brittany had already made it to exploring the Flickr website and the picture of the dogs she found is to die for!  I commented on the LA Time blog on a story of a woman trying to kill her baby because she didn’t want her husband to know she was pregnant, but the baby was found alive.  I didn’t agree with a lot of the comments that were being made, so I tried to give the conversation a new direction.  Finally, I commented on a recently created blog: Mommalicious-Striving for Fabulous With Spit-up On My Shoulder, because I felt the exact same way she feels now when I decided to come back to school to become an educator.