Day 1-31 Day Challenge

image: Salford Quays
I have decided to take the 31 Day Challenge to become a better blog citizen given my recent post. This challenge has been designed to encourage people to think about how they comment on blogs and how they create a space for people to comment on their own blogs and entails a number of actitivites through the 31 days of May 2008. The challenge has been set by a number of bloggers - specifically Michelle Martin and Sue Waters.
Day 1 of the Challenge involves running an audit of my comment behavior - what are my comment skills and strategies? To help in the audit, I have been asked to review an article about blog comments written by Gina Trapanui.

How often do you comment on other blogs during a typical week?
I guess there is no such thing as a typical week. I try to have a look at a few blogs each evening but I will admit that I don't always leave a comment - either through lack of confidence, lack of inspiration and/or lack of stimulation

Do you track your blog comments? How? What do you do with your tracking?
No, I ahve never really considered that this would be either possible or useful. But I can now see that to have a way of tracking whether my comments had created further discussion would be useful - particularly if I am to push myself to write more comments on more blogs.

Do you tend to comment at the same blogs or do you try to comment on at least one new blog per week?
I have my favourite blogs that I visit and track for new posts - usually people's blogs that I have met through blogging or have been directed towards from blogrolls of sites that I have found interesting or useful.

But I also make a point of trying to leave comments on others blogs - particularly those blogs within the occupational therapy profession in an effort to expand my network and also to try to attract people back to my blog. Not sure if this works or not as a strategy though as my post will testify.

Gina Trapanui's advice on leaving comments
On the whole I agree with everything Gina says about things like being courteous, keeping to topic and adding to the thread. On the whole, I am pretty good at sticking to the guidelines that Gina suggests although I fear I may occasionally add a comment that is more of a supportive statement than an addition to a debate or discussion. But then again - I actually think that some bloggers would want just some recognition that their posts are bein read- even if they don't all spark major debate.