Is it getting harder to gain an audience?

If you are a writer, or a businessman on the Internet, one of the key factors in your success is getting an audience.  If nobody comes to your site, you won’t be all that successful.

I have always been a proponent of writing good content.  Articles that engage people.  Articles that people read and think about.  Content that results in conversation coming back to you from the people who read it, and in turn you interacting with those who respond to your writing.  To me, that is what blogging is all about, and the more interaction you have with your readers, the more successful you will be.  Your audience will grow, and in turn, your earnings from your online activity will also grow.  It’s that simple.

Over the past year or so, though, I have noticed a new trend.  All of my websites have, over the years, been very interactive.  Sometimes a single article can get 300 to 400 comments.  Gaining this kind of interactivity has always been something that I have taken pride in, and has always been an indication to me of the popularity of what I wrote, the interest that people have in the content, and the general success of the website.  Now, keep this in mind, though…  an article getting a lot of comments is also a big job.  It is work to respond to 200 or 300 or more comments.  It takes time and effort.  But, if you don’t interact, you won’t garner that many comments for long, indicating that your audience is eroding.

Over the past year, though, I have noticed a general trend on my sites of having fewer comments than in the past.  I have thought this over pretty extensively, wondering why.  Is my audience declining?  No, it’s not at all.  If I look at the analytics of my site, the number of daily visitors is continually growing.  Why are people leaving fewer comments?  Is the quality of the content declining?  I don’t think it is if it were, why would the traffic on the site be increasing?

There are two reasons that I have decided maybe impacting the commenting:

1. I have personally been writing less than in the past.
2. Facebook.

I have been writing less

As I pointed out, I have been writing a lot less myself.  I got to the point in the past year or so that I was feeling burned out on writing, and I took a break.  Nothing wrong with that.  And, by saying that commenting is down because I am not writing as much does not mean that I am talking bad about others who write on my site.  Not at all.  But, the fact is that people go to my site to see what I am writing.  Because for years I had a very personal presence on my various websites, one in particular. I have a lot of people who consider me a friend, and thus they come looking for an article from me.  That is nothing against other writers, it is just a fact.

Because of this, and also the fact that I have been feeling that my batteries are recharged now, I have been writing more on my sites in the past few weeks, and I intend to get back to “normal” writing with many articles every week on my various websites.

Facebook

Yes, I consider Facebook another reason why I have been experiencing less interaction on my site than I did in the past.  Why?  Because people are getting interaction with me on Facebook instead of on my site.  I mean, if I post something on Facebook, I generally get 200 to 500 comments, and several hundred “likes” on anything I post.  So, where people used to log on to my website to interact with me, now they are doing it every day on Facebook instead.  I have joked with Feyma, my wife, that now I am getting burned out on Facebook due to the level of activity there!  Believe it or not, if  I post something engaging on Facebook, it is almost like having a job just keeping up with interacting with people there.  I do enjoy it, but it can be demanding, though.

So, I feel that I am seeing a shift from my own sites to Facebook.  Are others experiencing the same?  I believe that many are.  I have noticed on other blogs over the past year that commenting is on the decline.  So, it seems to be affecting many other sites, not just mine.

Is this a bad thing?

Is this trend of less on-blog interaction and more Facebook interaction a bad thing?  Not necessarily.  It is a different thing.  On the Internet, things change constantly. Generally, what this means is that those who are able to adapt and figure out ways to make the changes beneficial to them are the people who win on the Internet.  They have the most popular sites.  They have the most popular presence online.  They are able to convert their success to a nice income.  Those who resent the change and don’t embrace it are the ones who generally are less successful.

So, I plan to be one of the people who embrace changes.  What about you?  Will you get upset and fight change, or will you look for ways to make the changes bring you more success in the future?