{a comment revolution}

All right. It is time to start a revolution. 

My dear Bloggers and Bloggeresses: as you all know, the primary function of a blogger to write about things. Anything, really! Their lives, life in general, movies, books, school, dancing....writing, blogging, cooking...the list goes on an on.

It is also a well known fact that we write first for our own enjoyment but also for yours. And here's the thing: it's hard to keep up a vibrant, happy, healthy little blog without what Show Biz calls "Audience Participation."

I am as guilty as the next person of sometimes looking at my update feed, reading the posts, and leaving the page without leaving a comment. Heck--sometimes without even clicking those little reaction buttons. And a favor not bestowed is a favor never returned--why am I surprised when checking the comments on this blog to find very few, if any? We do love all of our followers, but the truth is, it's so much more inspiring to write for your group of followers if they appear to be alive...not just grinning little faces labeled under "Followers." ;)

Lately I have been challenging myself to actually leave comments. To go through the laborious and eye-bending task of filling out those "Captcha" doohickeys and doing the whole shebang. And not just a "great job!" comment--a real comment!
By now you're looking at me with your eyebrow raised. "Rachel you're sounding a bit...well, I hate to notice but...a bit revolutionary!"

What I'd like to propose is a 30-day challenge for each person who reads this blog. A 30 day challenge from this last day of August through the last day of September. A challenge for each of us to comment on 50% of the blog posts you read. I know it doesn't take that long to type up a comment and leave one. Truly.

So let's make a pact? One-half of the posts you read for one month? Deal? Who's with me on this? If you *are* with me, leave a comment (!) and tell me, and then take the meme I made up there and spread it around! Love you all and hope you have a fabulous Friday!
                 -Rachel

A Dissection of Commenting

Hello! I was racking my brain for any sort of brilliant, clever, comment-raking-in post I could do, and obviously, did not find one. Then I began thinking of what gets some blogs so many comments.......Here I recount my official findings ;)

There are two sorts of blogs: those who have it and those who don't. Ours used to have it. For some reason, it now tends toward the doesn't side of having it. ;) I went on a mental quest to find out just what the it-possessing blogs have that we don't...and here's what I came up with:

• Catchy Blog Names (Our Family View From Us Two is a mouthful ;)
• Wonderful graphics (We are html challenged over here! Besides- our officious filter blocks everything and its brother so we can't usually even see our own background! :P)
• Familiar Blog Administrator names (Who can resist peeking at a blog owned by a person named Jo March?!?! :)
• PICTURES!! (Oh we have the cute kids in our family. We have the wonderful pictures...we just can't post them here unless we go to a closed blog! :)
• Weddings (Um......not seeing that happen anytime soon! :D )
• Blog parties (We host contests, but it doesn't have the pizazz that Scraps, for instance, has!)

I can only come to two conclusions, as I am not a Sherlock Holmes- either we have lost our touch for writing commentable posts, or life is simply busy for our followers too! :)
Sure Blogger added a Stats page, and our stats are passable, but I raked up some statistics myself that only bloggy people could notice:

• Saturday is D-Day (Dead Day) Nobody is on, no one votes on any polls, or comments on any posts. You had better just not post on a Saturday
• Polls don't tell you anything if people don't vote on them! ;)
• People like the weirdest, randomest, strangest things- try to please them, and you don't, post about how you pickled frogs' ears and played the banjo, and they'll leave you 12 comments! ;)

Anyway! This is the bent my blogging mind ran on this morning! Hope you don't mind so very much! :D -Rachel

Scary Thought, But Give Us Your Real Opinion! :)

Okay guys. Here it is: this is our quarterly "customer satisfaction" post ;) Basically, we have had this blog for four months now, and it is time we get some feedback. So here is the mission: All you guys who follow this blog, or read this blog, or even just occasionally visit this blog, please leave a comment and tell us three things: Your over-all opinion of this blog, your favorite thing about it, and what you think we could improve. Got it? This mission should only take a few moments, and we'd really appreciate hearing from everybody. I'd like to see at least 20 people give us feed-back, because we have 24 followers, and between them, and several people I know who read this blog but don't follow it, I think we can get a tidy little idea of what we should work on this next quarter! (Don't I sound dreadfully like a CEO or something. I hate those little up and down profit charts! :) Thanks to all of our followers, and those people who faithfully leave comments. I'm sure you know how it is when you write a post, and it is "virtual crickets". (Note: in our family, when someone does something that goes over about as well as a lead balloon, we say it was "crickets" meaning like on a movie when it is so quiet you can hear the crickets chirping! :) Okay! Off you go! We'll leave this post on through Saturday, so let's open the flood-gates and start the voting! :)

-Rachel and Sarah (Us Two)