I too have been thinking about this a lot. Mostly because – even with increased subscriptions, increased mentions in the blogosphere and some nice affirmations from fellow bloggers – my technorati rating is taking a hit. I started asking myself if that number – the number of blogs that link to me – was all that important.

I’m sure you, like a lot of us, are spending time thinking about original content versus simply connecting to existing content. It’s not about links anymore. It’s about value. How do we measure the value of the post and the blog in general.

There is the value I place on my own blog – does it lead to new business – heck – that’s one of the main reasons I started it in the first place. Then there is the value I place on other blogs – does it enhance the way I do my job – am I learning, adapting, etc. Very difficult, and different, measurement tasks.

Subscriptions seem to be a good proxy – it does indicate the number of people who find the content valuable enough to click and connect. Whether feed reader or email. To me that is a good indicator that the effort is paying off.

I’m more convinced than ever that business blogs are less about conversation and more about connection. Are people connecting to the content – whether they comment or not. Comments are bonus points.

Charlie, you won’t have to wait long.

Scott, lol, HR are the thought police. We know what you’re thinking!

Paul, I’ve been talking to people for days about your comment here. It’s so right on the money. You’re right, with my personal blog it’s a way to talk to people who I know. With this one it’s more of a news item. I can read the newspaper, enjoy a story, and move on. Just like you pointed out…they don’t need commentary.

It’s funny, blogging a few years ago was about comments….but your post here has me really thinking. I do like Kris’s approach…write stories that are worthy of passing along…that’s a good standard. And I think your comment here should be front-and-center in the discussion of the maturing of blogs. Thanks much, Paul, for stimulating my thinking on this.

I also believe as the medium has matured the quality of blogs postings has gone up and the need to comment has gone down (IMHO.) Many posts I read don’t require a comment because they do a great job of establishing their point of view backed up with good logic. I read it, file it and use it for future work and to expand my own thinking.

In addition, the number of blogs I read has gone up – leaving me less time to comment. I want my comments to be at least as good as the post so they take time. Sometimes they take as much time as it takes to put a post up on my own blog. I therefore am very selective about where I comment. I would submit that the number of comments you have posted has decreased as you spend more time reading other blogs and writing quality posts on your own. Just a guess.

I liken it to being at a cocktail party. When the number of people is small you have deeper more engaged conversations. As the number of attendees grows, there are fewer, deeper conversations. You bounce around listening in and looking for a specific conversation where you think you can add value and where you can have a more substantive dialogue.
Sometimes you find it – sometimes you don’t. But by spending time in that conversation you miss out on others. A choice is made… listen in on a lot of conversations but contribute less, or contribute more to one conversation and listen in on fewer.

It does make it harder from an author’s perspective.

I now wonder if conversation is the appropriate metric for judging the success of a blog. Kris Dunn at HRCapitalist uses a metric for his HR Power Blog List based on whether he forwards your blog info on to others.

I think that is a good way to judge the quality of a post versus comments.

Sorry for the ramble but I think you’ve hit on an important conversation.

I nominated your blog for Outstanding Blog Award over at Orbit Now! (http://troyworman.com/wordpress/cool-friends/) Hopefully this will help awareness and comments on your site. Keep up the good work.

I know here we have the Central Iowa Bloggers, and a few of us carry out our conversations about business on each other’s post. Maybe it might be a good idea to set something up where every other week we have a moderator who takes on a case or question and tags 4 to 6 other HR professionals to respond and give their thoughts?

I’m not in the HR biz but I enjoy reading your posts (I especially liked your 9/14 post on thinking errors – and by extension those very errors are leveraged in creating and propagating arguments based fallacious reasoning). Since this is your HR blog I refrain from posting comments since they would not be in or from the HR context. So I’ll continue to read your posts but rarely if ever comment here…BTW this is a great blog. (It’s all about affirmation baby, affirmation)

Returning to lurker mode….