Tying up the last few sessions I’m going to write about…

Understanding Audiences

Part of this seemed geared toward the journalism side of the house, since there was a fair amount of discussion on demographics and statistics, but some of it applied to the bloggers among the crowd. One of the main points was that comments don’t really tell you much about your audience — many people simply like to lurk and read, and have nothing to add or question. So commenters, as with volunteer surveys, do not give you a good sample; it’s not unusual for the commenters to be the people who are simply having a strong reaction to what was posted. And you may not even be getting a fair sample of the extrema, since there’s an adage from word-of-mouth-land that people who are happy with a service or product tell one or two people, but if you are angry you tell everyone (something for customer service folk to keep in mind).

However, if you do want people to comment, you have to make sure that there aren’t barriers. Many people find the requirement to register before you can comment as off-putting and a sign that you really aren’t interested. More applicable to commercial sites, I would think.

I Can Haz Context

Some important tidbits from this session. There was a focus on how annoying it can be to tune into a news broadcast, where you have no idea what’s going on, because the focus is on bringing you the latest details, and not giving you the background. Blogs aren’t going to bring breaking news, so it’s imperative to include material that gives background and context to whatever it is you are writing about. Depth is what we bloggers (and journalists) can give, so we need to take advantage of that.

Once again, there was a large swath of discussion pertaining to commercial sites and page views — the best way to get people to click through to supporting “explainer” links where you’ve gone into more depth. The consensus was that link at the beginning (A kind of “you must read this if you don’t understand X” link) or at the end, because readers are less likely to interrupt their reading to go to those links. (I really can’t corroborate this)