Digital Streets

Back in the early 80's, Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson authored a great little book called The One Minute Manager which outlined three simple management techniques that helped one become a more effective manager. These same concepts can also help one become a comment master instead of merely posting simplistic, non-productive comments, you could be contributing to the blog post and the productivity of the blog author as well.

Blanchard and Johnson’s management techniques were quite simple in nature:

1. One Minute Goals
2. One Minute Praising
3. One Minute Reprimands

With some minor adjustments, these same techniques are quite useful when commenting on a blog post.

1. One Minute Goals: The goals of the blog post are laid out by the blog author. You can derive these goals from the title of the post and from the first paragraph. You need to assess your ability to contribute in an effective manner. Your goal is to make your commentary useful to the author and to other readers.

2. One Minute Praising: Once you have assessed the goals of the blog post, you should start identifying everything that the author did to meet those goals. Let the author know how the information was useful, do your best to catch him/her doing something right. Praise is very rewarding to the author, adding fuel to write more posts in the future.

3. One Minute Reprimands: We’re not talking about slamming the author, we’re talking about identifying areas where goals of the post were not meant. Add additional information and tell why it is of importance and ask questions about any gaps you find. This gives the author the opportunity to improve his/her post plus it gives them food for thought on their next post. If you disagree with the post, debate the post, don’t make any personal attacks on the author. Debate can be beneficial to both the commenter and the author, helping both refine their position.

By using these techniques, you can write effective and productive commentary that will benefit the author and other readers, plus create an audience of your own. Many readers spend a great deal of time reading the various comments that follow a post.