Cooking Blog

Ever notice that different types of blogs can by their very nature receive more or less responses. I began noticing this as I posted more recipes on my blog than book reviews. The wife has a wonderful blog on book reviews. She receives so many comments that she even uses an analysis tool (from google) to track her hits and what not. She also belongs to a gozzillion different book blogs and challenges.

We were recently at friend's house talking about this. Both of them have blogs too and making the same comments. The one has a cooking blog that is really neat, but doesn't get many comments. The other has more movie reviews, comic book reviews, video gaming stuff, etc and gets more comments.

So my question, being a psychology major, was why does one type of blog get more comments than another and I have drawn the following observations:

1. A person is more likely to get more comments on their blog the more they leave comments on other blogs. This would make sense. A person that does this is not only putting their name (blog) out there more often, but is encouraging more response by a social interaction theory.
2. The content of a blog can either be open or closed. What I mean by that is that the content can either lend itself to being commented on or not. So, a cooking blog is less likely to get comments than a book blog. Why? Book blogs generally do book challenges. Ergo, everybody read this book and make a comment on what you think. Its like an on-line book club. If it isn't one book, its one type of book (e.g., sci-fi, history, etc). Cooking blogs do not generally have cooking challenges though. I mean, how many Spanish Tapas Cooking Challenges have you seen out there. This may be uncharted territory though for cooking enthusiasts. How about this, leave a comment and let me know what you think about doing a cooking challenge and then sharing recipes afterwards.
3. That leads me to my final observation. Blogs that pose a question or request a response generally get one. Exceptions exist ofcourse. If the blog is a slow traffic site, it may not get that many hits to begin with. One thing is unique about blogging though; it doesn't lend itself well to the trajedy of the commons. When you read a post, you automatically see how many people have commented. Therefore, there is not the temptation to leave without commenting, based soley on the thought that someone else will. Wouldn't it be great if social situations came with automatic feedback features? Perhaps more people would call 911 when they see an emergency situation occuring?

Happy thinking!