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If on your site you simply pretend to care about what other people think when in reality you do not care, you should avoid asking for opinions all together. Sometimes it is better to not ask for any opinions if you cannot handle them, the way some high profile bloggers disable comments on their sites these days. When should you ask users about their opinion, and when should you avoid asking users for their opinions? One effective way to answer such a question is to find out whether or not you are ready to listen to other people when you ask them for their opinion through polls and comments.

Polls - should you care about the minority voters?

You can have polls on your site to allow people to vote for different things. However, the moment you ask someone to participate in a poll, you yourself enter a world of dilemma where you have to answer two questions; how many people who vote on your polls should you please, and how many people will you end up upsetting along the way?

For example, imagine running a poll on your site that asks your readers if they think it is a good idea to change your current site colors, say green, to orange. Now assume you get the following results from people who vote:

• 50% want the site colors changed to orange
• 49% want the site colors to remain green
• 1% do not care

In this case, you can run to the idea of democracy and say that you have to appeal to the majority of the people. But what should be done about that 49% that does care about the issue? Should you ignore them or simply say “Sorry!” and move on? Do they have to be neglected and penalized simply because they were short of the few necessary votes? It seems unfair that someone should be ignored simply because there were not a lot of other people agreeing with them. Those 49% voters who lost to the majority voted because they respected your choice to listen to their opinion. You should respect each of their vote and act accordingly also, regardless of what you do with their votes.

Even when you do not do something that the minority voters wanted, you should at least acknowledge their vote and offer a good explanation for your decisions. Saying “because majority of the people thought this was a good idea” is not a reason to do something. It is an excuse to hide the fact that you are going along with the idea that will give you the least resistance or criticism. Being opposed by 49% of the people may appear to be a better choice than being opposed by 50% of the people, but you can try to make those 49% unhappy people satisfied in some ways also.

Each and every comment needs proper care and attention

When you allow people to comment on your site, you are asking them to take some time to write out their thoughts, feelings or opinions. That is a huge favor to ask for, and you should respect people for doing you that favor. Making it easy for other people to comment helps people participate more on your site, and that means you have to respect people even more because you make efforts to make sure people are drawn into dedicating time on your site. Respect any participation and try to listen to people who participate. If you get criticized through different types of criticizing comments, learn the “Art of Reacting to Criticizing Comments.” No matter what you do, listen to everything and react accordingly and with respect.

I see more and more blogs and companies everyday that disrespect most user comments by ignoring them. However, these same blogs and companies respond to every comment by high profile bloggers, whether on their own sites or on the high profile blogger’s blog. None of these bloggers and online services treat blog readers equally. They simply jump into the conversation arena when they want to please a high profile blogger. That is in my view a disrespect to everyone else, and I notice it on many low and high profile blogs. Do you notice a similar trend on sites you visit?

Can you ever listen to everyone?

Forget the myth that you should get everyone involved and then after a poll or comment, leave the minority in the dust. Treat everyone the same and with respect, even the people who wanted something that you did not or could not provide in the end. You may not be able to please everyone, but you can try to satisfy and respect everyone. Not being able to respond to every comment or vote is an excuse in my view; if you have time to respond to all the people you consider important, you should also have time to respond to people you may not know or may consider insignificant.

Your blog is your country: run it in ways to make everyone happy while making sure your basic duties are fulfilled. Your basic duties include helping your people, who are your blog readers. When your other basic duties like improving site design get affected when you are trying to appeal to people along the way, stick to things you believe in, and offer explanations to people whose opinions you did not consider in your decisions. When you sincerely explain to someone why you could not please them after you asked for their comment or vote, you are expressing that you are of the opinion that the laws of nature do not allow you to do everything that everyone wants at the same time. People would rather be told why something did not happen instead of being ignored.

Be accommodating asking for opinions

When you ask for opinions, be flexible and creative. Commenting takes time, and so does participating in a poll. Just because you provide commenting and polls for free does not mean you have to neglect the importance of votes and comments you receive. Spending time on your blog is one of the most important favors you can ask people, and when you do, be ready to respect those people regardless of their opinions. There are ways to satisfy people, even when you do things they do not like.

Try not to ask for opinions on things you have already decided on unless you are a flexible person who is willing to change opinions if convinced with good logic. Otherwise, over time, people will start realizing that you simply ask for comments and votes for polls in order to act as if you care, but in reality you simply want to go with the flow and get more traffic.

If you care about only what majority of the people or high profile bloggers think, you should not ask everyone to comment or vote on your site in the first place. If you do ask for everyone to comment or vote with such a mentality, try having a header on your site that says “Comments and votes allowed only from people I care about, or people who make a lot of money!”

[update 1 - 11:34 am PST - 03-08-07] Edited one sentence for clarity and validity as per Stacee’s suggestion and my response below[/update]

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An example of how a link post helped the blogger, reader, and me tremendously

Daniel recently shared Reader Tips with his readers that included a link to my article that talked about my thoughts on treating blog readers equally, and so did Dan. While reading those posts, I realized a few things. The posts allowed the bloggers to share some useful link with their readers. The readers found different perspectives on different blogging issues, probably written in different writing styles compared to how the bloggers usually write. The readers probably found that change refreshing.

Am I happy that Daniel and Dan linked to me? Of course. I got more people to come to my site and see through my post what I think they should know about. In addition to that, I read the other Reader Tips and thought of 23 topics I can write about. I have not had any other occasion in my life where I read 2 short blog posts and any links in them in less than 10 minutes and came up with 23 topics that I could write about along the way, without even finishing reading all the links. Thus, I benefited as a blogger since the two bloggers linked to me, and I also benefited as a reader since I learned new things through the link posts. I can now apply the new knowledge to at least 23 different posts which would be 23 new perspectives on different things for my blog readers. For me, that is very interesting.

Daniel, thank you for linking to me again, I really appreciate it and am happy that you continue to find my posts interesting. Dan, thank you also for linking to me.

Link posts share knowledge

Link post can be used to share knowledge with people, something that is vital to the success of anyone who wants to put an effort to it. We can all stick to our own posts and keep talking about things we want to talk about without offering alternatives to let people decide on their own. However, is that not selfish? Not telling our readers that other sources of information exist on a regular basis is, maybe, trying to make our users dumb so that they can only stick to our own posts or ideas. Sharing knowledge through links is a way to make everyone look for different perspectives on similar and different issues in order to come with our own understand of different things.

So go on, write link posts and link to all my posts.

Should I also start link posts on my site?

Now the big question is: should I also start something similar to a link post on a regular basis? I do not know. What do you think? I think you are way too important for me to let go through link posts, even though I love posting external links in articles I write. Should I hold on to you, like a baby holds on to yummy chocolate, or should I sometimes send you off to wander in new gardens so that you and I both can try new fruits? Please tell me. I am too hungry right now to think of the answer.

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Emergency posts and scheduled posts help avoid bloggers block

Both emergency posts and scheduled posts address the issue of a Bloggers Block. With emergency posts, you write a post everyday and if you cannot come up with a topic to write about, you pick one of your emergency posts to post for that day. In contrast, by scheduling posts in advance, you write posts for each day of the week in advance, and let the posts be automatically published on specific days by your blogging software.

Scheduling written posts allows you to relax and not worry about coming up with topics to write about within a day. With your free time, you can slowly plan and start working on further scheduled posts for the future weeks. You can even reread the posts you have already written and scheduled to be published in order to improve and clarify them further before they get posted.

Do things early for your business and personal life

You can apply the concept of scheduled posts to other activities in your life also. If you have a business project, start it early and take it slow. You may need a lot of time later to solve any issues. For example, if you have a deadline for finding out elements that affect communication between different departments within a company, you may run into unexpected issues while doing the project. Starting things in advance will let you know what you need in order to accomplish your tasks and address any problems earlier instead of later at the last minute.

Similarly, if you want to accomplish a personal goal, do not wait till the last hour to start your activity, even if you think you can accomplish your goal without any issues. Start early so you can have less stressful time in the end. For example, if you have a goal of reading 50 pages every night before midnight, having 3 pages to read just before midnight will be less stressful than having 20 pages. The less things you have to do near a deadline to accomplish a task effectively, the more productive and less stressful you will feel.

Start things in advance to be more effective and less stressed

If you start things in advance, you get a better idea of what things should be done and how those things should be done. Starting things early will allow you to encounter any problems in the early stages of your efforts, which in turn will allow you to correct any mistakes and solve any issues well ahead of any deadline. You can then realize whether or not you should start doing more things early, or if you can simply wait and accomplish your tasks slowly without feeling any pressure.

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