What Comes First- The Comment or The Post?
You just joined Active Rain after reading some posts and now you are ready to jump in and start participating in the Active Rain Community. 
So you spend time doing research on a post to write, you spend 2 hours writing your first post on your blog, you hit the publish button with sweaty palms nervous about that very first time!
Then you sit there at your computer refreshing your home page to see if you get any comments.
Alas! No one comes! Your post becomes lonely and you wonder why no one appreciated all your hard work, doesn't anyone appreciate what you just went through?
So the question becomes;
What should you do first?
Comment on other member blogs or write more content?
If you start commenting first without writing articles on your blog-
people will come to your blog to reciprocate to find it empty and void, they will move on and most likely forget to come back again.
If you start writing content for your blog first without having made any connections with commenting-
people will not even know you exist ( except for a few that may see one of your very catchy and interesting titles on the Active Rain reader board for those split seconds it appears there).
It is like the age old question: what came first the chicken of the egg?
The very first thing to do is set emotions aside and do not take the response personal if you are writing valuable and good content.
The next thing that is very important to remember is that if you are writing content for your local market like market reports, information on the parks in your market, news from your community- those posts are just not going to yield a lot of comments, if any from members on Active Rain. But that should not deter you from writing this local content because the consumers, the sellers and the buyers in your market and from around the world will begin to read your blog eventually.
The consumers very rarely comment on the blogs that they are reading.
- The best way to gauge whether people are reading your blog is to go to your Active Rain statistics page and see your views for different posts.
- I also love to use mybloglog tracking because it gives me great ideas of what to write about based on the clicks and views that I can track there precisely down to the very words they used to find my blog.
Sidebar: We use this as a listing tool and it is very impressive!
Now of course if you are using Active Rain to just post your listings and write ads then don't expect any response from members or consumers.
You are NOT going to be getting any referrals if you use Active Rain and as a Dump Site for your listings.
You make friends who come to your blog and comment by commenting on other their blogs; meaningful comments that add value.
You keep those friends by writing articles that add value to the community, individuals and groups on your blog.
So the answer is that you must do both simultaneously.
What I do is that I comment on blogs in between phone calls, waiting for water to boil, in between activities to get at least 10 comments in per day.
Now when I first started blogging on Active Rain I made 30 to 50 comments most days and I made some of my best friends ever by just doing this.
I have friends that I can call on any time any day to come to my aid and I can depend on them to handle any referral I send their way!
Then since I am a night owl after everything is quiet in my home, my son cuddles up to me and I write the content for my blog.
I write 10 posts per week; 5 for Real Estate, Localism and Community information and 5 for my coaching business, helping the agents here to blog better, work smarter and follow their dreams to become all that they can be. I add a good amount of personal posts for transparency and building the relationship with the consumer and agent.
Do what is comfortable for you. Most of all have fun and enjoy the journey!
By TwitterButtons.com
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Great newbie blog and thanks for the info!