RE: Why comments matter

I've been spending a fair amount of time recently re-thinking how I intentionally interact with and create posts on Hive. So your post here is very timely for me.

Engage with posts you enjoy that interest you so you have something to say. The author will probably welcome the engagement (or at least they should), especially if they do not get much otherwise. Responding to comments can lead to more regular support.

This is important to point out. And it has been one of the difficult things for me. My career is fitness and I'm arguably a subject matter expert in that field. For a long time it interested me, and I thought maybe I'd find joy in interacting with the fitness communities on Hive like Actifit and Exhaust. But the truth is that as I prepare to retire from fitness work, consuming and interacting with that kind of content just isn't exciting anymore.

This took me some time to learn this about myself. And I've found I get more joy from reading posts from folks that are writing on things I know less about. It does make contributing to the conversation harder, since my knowledge base is smaller. But I guess the thing to do then is to ask clarifying questions in the comments to keep the engagement up. Maybe that kind of thing would work for others also finding themselves wanting to be social on a post where they perhaps don't have the knowledge or vocabulary to be adding to or counter-pointing a discussion.

I agree that more social engagement is necessary for Hive to attract more users. When I write content I try to remember to finish with a question to spark engagement, like you did in this post. I don't always remember, but I think that just as people should strive to comment more, so too should folks writing posts try to prompt that engagement. I think that's part of good blogging.

All that said...

Nice post.

!PIZZA