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Thursday, December 17, 2009

The Value of Commenting

We had a fun presentation last week, “Building Your Social Media Platform” at the Leadership Breakfast of Maryland. As part of the presentation, we asked participants to post on my blog, Through The Browser. So far we have 13 comments.
One of the organizers expected more comments.
“How many were you expecting?”
“I was expecting more.”
I have been thinking about that for a few days.
First, we already have a one-out-of-three response rate. Direct mail measures response in hundredths and thousandths. Print advertising is less.
Second, as usual, the commenters educated the presenter. I was amused, provoked, and moved forward by the thinking in the comments.
Third, our combined information is now available to others. I plan on making this presentation several times next year and adding to the comments on this post. I might like to know about a presentation before I attend, I may have a better informed audience in the future, and I expect further comments are going to expand our knowledge of the subject.
Finally, I was already in a meeting with these 40 people for almost two hours. I don’t believe I learned as much through the conversations in person as I learned from the comments.
Your comments? *grin*

1 comment:

  1. To begin with the comments take place in a non-threating environment and after a bit of time after the conversations at the meeting. This allows the audience to digest the presentation and conversation before commenting. This should lead to a more meaningful comment than conversation.

    I don't know if letting people know ahead of time will increase the number of respondents or not. Maybe their conversations at the presentation will be more focused with even better comments later. Who knows? Let me know how it turns out.

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