Reader saturation within blog comments sections
Occasionally, after emailing a blogger with a suggestion or story idea, I receive a polite reply inviting me to take my message to the blogger’s comment section. Though there is definitely inherent worth within this subsection of a website, there’s no question that in terms of readership it is of lesser visibility. Mike Masnick at TechDirt lambastes the PR minions who seek out coverage within his blog posts, telling them to mix with the other commoners in his blog comments section if they want to deliver a message.
My reading habits are no indication for the blog reading public at large, but based on observation there is a small percentage of the overall readership that dives into the comments; just as a pub has its mixture of regulars and random visitors, so do most blogs. If your message or comment manages to squirm its way through the moderators and CAPTCHA traps, it will essentially remain below the “fold,” where only the most avid and loyal readers dwell. Given that many blog posts are read through an RSS feed, which renders the comments invisible, it’s unsurprising that PR flacks, wanting to claim large audience reach and influence, don’t want to resort to this method. I don’t completely blame them for not wanting to mingle with the commoners, not while the vast majority of the public are merely window shoppers, not willing to venture in and browse around.
