Active Lurkers: How Idea Lovecats Demonstrate Engagement

Many of us bloggers look at the disparity between the number of visitors to our blogs and the number of comments on our blogs, and weep shake our heads.

Why is the ratio of unique visitors to commenters 683 to 1? Or 389 to 5? Or 200 to 0?

What are those other 682, 384, or 200 readers doing? They are spending time on the page, you can tell from your analytics. But they aren’t commenting. They are ‘just lurking’.

Why? Does your blog just suck disappoint? Fail to engage people? Chat with its own echo?

Blogs are supposed to generate conversations and communities, and in so doing change the world. Comments matter because they demonstrate that readers are engaging with the ideas you’re proposing on your blog.

Comments indicate engagement — but there are other ways to engage

When one of your blog posts triggers authentic engagement, commenters converse not just with you the blogger but also with each other, creating a community that uses your blog as a touchstone, a resource, a gathering place.

As any Problogger will tell you, there are many things you can do to increase the likelihood that people will comment on your blog posts. Be provocative, ask questions, reply to comments, follow up with emails, and so on. All good tactics.

But all the urging to pursue these tactics implies that there is something wrong about reading and not commenting. What if nothing is wrong? What if those readers are not “just lurking” but instead are engaged in ways that don’t include commenting?

These lurkers may be engaging with your ideas, but doing it somewhere else.

Lurkers may also be engaged, but in other ways

Science tells us that lurkers are not self-centered idea scavengers. Nor are they online introverts lacking in gumption.

Science also tells us that, while some lurkers ‘just lurk’ passively, other lurkers are active. Over half of lurkers take the information that they’ve gathered in one context and use it somewhere else.

These “active lurkers” take ideas from your blog and others, use them to improve their own practice, to establish relationships, and to contribute by sharing these ideas within their more local communities.

What Active Lurkers Do With Your Ideas

Active lurkers are busy creatures. They prowl about the blogosphere:

1. Lurking for practical use.
Your lurkers take ideas from your blog and others and apply them to their own personal work.

2. Lurking for propagation.
Your lurkers take ideas from your blog and share them with others in their ‘home’ communities.

3. Lurking for personal contact.
Your lurkers take ideas and insights from your blog and use them to establish relationships… maybe with you, maybe with other readers, maybe with followers on Twitter.

Lurkers are Idea Lovecats

All active lurkers have the potential to become what Tim Sanders calls ‘lovecats‘:  people who share knowledge freely and with good intent. With the right attitude, active lurking serves the individual, facilitates relationship building, and adds to group learning.

All of this active lurking can benefit the community that your blog connects with, and the community that your blog readers participate in.

That gap between the number of the unique visitors and the number of unique comments on your blog may not be all negative.  This is especially true for those of us who blog not so much to generate conversation on our blogs, but more to get ideas out to people’s work groups and organizations.

Is there ever proof of Active Lurking?

My colleague PCM (who regularly talks with me about posts she likes but never comments on the blog itself) gave me an encouraging piece of info today. She told me that lately, when her tweens see someone in an atrocious outfit, they squeal “Get me Johnny Weir”.

Apparently my posts are having an impact at Glenfield Middle School. Not quite my target audience, but I’ll take it. Who knows where those lurkers will take these ideas next?

See Also:
Fix the Brand of Men’s Figure Skating: Send Out the Clowns, and get me Johnny Weir

Takahashi, M., Fujimoto, M. and Yamasaki, N., Active Lurking: Enhancing the Value of In-House Online Communities Through the Related Practices Around the Online Communities (April 1, 2007). MIT Sloan Research Paper No. 4646-07; CCI Working Paper No. 2007-006. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1041261

Takahashi, M., Fujimoto, M. and Yamasaki, N., The roles and effects of active lurking in in-house online communities (July 2005) Human-Computer Interaction International Conference

Thanks to Lindy Dreyer on Social Fish, for letting us know that March 19, 2010 “Love a Lurker Day“, and thus prompting this post.

Photos of Dale the Lazy Cat by Magh