The post is an interview with MizFit Online who’s a fitness blogger. Reading the post however did not get me too far, other than MizFit’s avid blog reading and commenting herself and a key phrase “commentversation” which tried to capture her approach. Even MizFit seems unsure of what drives the comments saying “If only I knew. It varies wildly.”

I wanted to know more and decided to do some real analysis on MizFit’s blog. It seems like a great blog. True to her personality. Quite personal. And it seems she’s got a strong following. She also has a theme/category of the day: Monday Faceday, Tuesday Trends, View Mail Food, Glorious Food and Link Love.

I started by looking at every post she made in November. I looked at the title of the post, the theme, the length of the post, text vs. video, the number of outbound links in the post and the number of links to other pages on the blog.

The only thing that seemed to matter was whether the blog post was part of a theme. Uncategorized posts did very poorly incomparison. Post length, other than extremely short posts, had no impact. Number of links had no impact either. Video performed as well as text.

I decided to dig in further. I took the last 10 posts for each theme and for uncategorized posts (note: I screened out the uncategorized posts that were very short announcements).

Here are the results of the analysis of the last 10 posts by theme/catagory:

The results are facinating, at least to me.  If you factor out contests, four of the themes average about 100 comments per post.  Food Glorious Food does a little less well averaging 89.6 comments per post, which may be due to a heavier reliance on guest posts in this theme.

The pattern I saw with the uncategorized posts held true.  These types of posts only averaged 48.4 comments per post.

Contests also play a big role in making the numbers fluctuate.  They seem to add about 45 extra comments to a post on average.  More when the contest was enticing and less when it was not so enticing.

I dug further into the best performing and worst performing non-contest posts to see if I could find some other qualitative reasons for the variances. Indeed there seemed to be more going on qualitatitively.

When I looked deeper at the strongest performing posts based upon comments, I saw that these posts tended to stand out for one or more of the following reasons: Challenges, very personal stories, strenuous exercise video, or lots of questions (3-5) to audience at the end of the post.

In contrast the poorest performing posts were missing these elements.  The poorest performing posts where guest posts without questions to the readers. These posts dropped to 66-79 comments.  Guest posts with questions did a little better running in the mid 80s.  MizFit’s poorest performers in themed posts tended not to have as much passion and had no questions for the audience.

My take aways if you want to generate comments:

• Be personal
• Be passionate
• Post questions not answers
• Set up themes by day and be consistent
• Make sure guest posters have lots of questions for readers
• Use small contests to motivate your commentors

So what do you think?  What kind of posts get people to comment?  Is it this list or some other factors?  Who else gets lots of comments and what do they do?

Comment away:)

Update with ideas from comments about what drives comments:

• commentversation
• taking the time to personally respond to comments

Influence on the web is all about connectivity — the larger the network, the more powerful the links.

He makes the point that it is the links that drive the power and influence of sites and networks. He points out that the most successful of companies is the one that has been the most prolific linker of all: Google.

And this is one of our key thoughts as well – it’s one of the major reasons we care about Super Fans, because they are linkers by nature.

[tags]super fans, links, influentials[/tags]

If you are interested in producing a social media marketing campaign that uses user generated content this podcast is for you. David discusses the concerns advertisers have about marketing around user generated content and some of the steps marketers can take to mitigate the risks. He provides case studies from other companies that show how they have managed to produce successful social marketing campaigns. David has suggestions about how to connect with super fans and turn them into allies that will make social marketing work for you.

David Becker is ExpoTV’s Chief Marketing Officer. Prior to Expo, David served as president and COO for Beliefnet.com, a spirituality and self-help web site. David also founded Backslap Entertainment, a user-generated content production and syndication company backed by Fremantle, producers of American Idol. David was also President and COO of Uproar.com.

[tags]social media marketing, user generated content, super fans, advertising, David Becker, ExpoTV[/tags]

Dean was able to provide us with some excellent perspective on these new advertising opportunities. He is part of a group that looks at opportunities to advertise via the Xbox, Media Center, Zune and mobile platforms. We go into depth on in game advertising and how important this new segment will be. He walked us through case studies of Domino’s Pizza and P&G that describe how a well designed campaign can add to the realism of the game experience and yield results for the advertiser.

This is a must listen podcast for advertisers who are struggling to break through on television and are looking for new ways to market their products using these rapidly growing platforms.

[tags]Dean Carignan, Microsoft, in game advertising, gaming, social media, super fans[/tags]

Jason’s discussion of his experience at MySpace illustrates the importance of operational optimization to drive monetization of super fans. In his new company, Jason is putting a lot of what he’s learned to use in creating a new and fun social site. SodaHead has mastered the art of lowering the difficulty and barriers to user generated content. It leads to an experience where its much easier to join in the social mix in a more meaningful way than just asking someone to be your friend. SodaHead is definitely an experience everyone should try.

Jason Feffer has an exciting eight-year history of Internet startup experience leading up to his most recent startup, SodaHead.com. Mr. Feffer helped start MySpace in 2003, which sold to News Corp for $580M. During his three years at MySpace, Jason served on the executive committee and as Vice President of Operations as the membership grew to 100 million. Mr. Feffer oversaw advertising operations, revenue reporting, policy enforcement, government relations and several other departments at MySpace.

[tags]Jason Feffer, MySpace, SodaHead, social media, social networking, social media optimization, super fans[/tags]

Pandora is a popular music recommendation service built on the Music Genome Project. It’s a fantastic service for discovering music and well worth a try if you have not experienced Pandora.

We discuss the importance of having a good product and connecting with fans. Tim speaks about how he has traveled the country to learn from Pandora’s fans and how he uses Town Hall meetings to get feedback directly from the fans. They started small with just six people in these Town Hall meetings and now have meetings where as many as 400 people show up to meet with Tim.

The lesson learned is that the effect of proactively communicating personally and sincerely with people is an incredibly powerful force in turning people into evangelists.

[tags]Tim Westergren, Pandora, Super Fans[/tags]

Reuters’ history of syndication is proving a valuable capability as Reuters manages highly distributed content across their own sites, partner sites and other third party sites. They have decided who they want to target specifically and use content creatively to drive audience.

Stephen Smyth is responsible for Reuters Americas consumer business, driving revenue and audience for the online, mobile, interactive TV, digital signage and online syndication services. In addition, Stephen oversees global business development as well as local programming and production, traffic and ad operations in the Americas. Prior to his current role, Stephen led Reuters mobile, video, and digital signage business globally. He was responsible for maximizing revenues and brand value from the company’s presence on these platforms and oversaw relationships with key technology providers and distribution affiliates across the globe. In addition, he headed up Reuters Labs, a public showcase of the latest consumer product innovations from Reuters. Previously, Stephen was responsible for media strategy and business development for Reuters.

[tags]Reuters, Stephen Smyth, super fans, syndication, podcast[/tags]

We have a great discussion about the Big Ten Network and how the Super Fans can be more like tribes than traditional segments. These Super Fans cover the entire demographic spectrum and building communities that work for them requires understanding the different use case these fans have and how to build sites, tools and conversations that recognize these different needs.

We also explore some of the organizational challenges of coordinating across the different channels, and the importance of creating complimentary experiences across channels.

Here’s a bit more about Will and his responsibilities at Fox:

Will Flannery is Vice President, Advanced Services for Fox Cable Networks (FCN). He is responsible for the day-to-day distribution activities for advanced television services including high-definition, interactivity and video-on-demand services involving Fox Cable Networks, a portfolio of networks including FX, FX HD, FSN and its 19 owned-and-operated regional sports networks, National Geographic Channel, National Geographic Channel HD, SPEED, SPEED HD, FUEL TV, Fox College Sports, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports en Español, Fox Movie Channel, Fox Reality Channel and the Big Ten Network. In addition, Flannery also works closely with sister units such as Fox Networks Engineering & Operations, Fox Digital Entertainment, Fox Interactive Media and Fox Mobile Entertainment on new product offerings, copyright protection, inventory sales and technical solutions.

[tags]Will Flannery, Super Fans, Social Media, Fox Cable Networks[/tags]

Jeffrey started Pendant in 2004 to pursue his interest in fan fiction and fan generated radio dramas. Pendant is an all volunteer effort producing more than a dozen different shows, both takeoffs on existing properties and original properties produced by Pendant.

Pendant got its start with “Star Trek: Defiant” a text based story list that Jeffrey started way back in 1995. Jeffrey got interested in producing an audio version of the stories, and was able to find enough sound effects and audio mixing programs to make it possible. He went on to produce “Star Trek: Defiant” as an audio file. Not long after starting the first Defiant audio, Jeffrey was listening to some of the old Superman radio serials from the 1940s and had the inspiration to do Superman audio too, which led to the formation of Pendant Productions in 2004.

Jeffrey told me about Pendant’s history and how they make so many great radio shows. It is a fascinating story that shows just how much Super Fans can achieve and produce.

Here are the Pendant Productions:

Superman: Last Son of Krypton	Batman: The Ace of Detectives
Wonder Woman: Champion of Themyscira	Supergirl: Lost Daughter of Krypton
The Pendant Shakespeare	Star Trek: Defiant
Star Wars: Blue Harvest	Seminar
This Week in Pendant	Dixie Stenberg and Brassy Battalion
The Kingery	Once Upon a Time in Vegas
Imperium: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman Crossover	James Bond: To The End	Indiana Jones and the Well of Life
Indiana Jones and the Well of Life

Downloads are available in web-quality and CD quality. The CD quality downloads are available via BitTorrent.
[tags]super fans, podcast, pendant productions, Jeffrey Bridges, superman, batman, wonder woman, supergirl[/tags]

In this podcast, Chris provides some great perspective on the organizational and personnel challenges these companies face in the transition to new business models. He describes the role that social marketing and super fans played in helping properties like Syriana and An Inconvenient Truth break out and build audiences. This podcast interview provides a behind the scenes view into where things are now and some of the major changes to come.

Chris is founder and president of Orbit Media Group, where he consults with media and internet companies creating partnerships, programming and relationships between and to the benefit of media, entertainment and online brands. His current clients range from Facebook.com, one of the fastest-growing internet companies on earth, for which he helped to create and produce “Facebook Diaries,” the first-ever hybrid user-generated video/reality TV show to be distributed on Facebook.com, Ziddio.com, Comcast VOD and linear television and the IFC Channel, to HBO to Comcast, the largest cable and broadband company in the US to HBO to Glam.com, the number one site for women to film icons, to Born4Sports, a social network, marketplace and ecommerce platform for sports and sports lifestyle with presence in Europe, Asia and soon, the US.

Prior to launching his own consulting company, Chris co-founded Participant Productions in 2004 with Jeff Skoll, eBay’s first President. Participant’s vision is to create entertainment that inspires audiences to make social change. In this capacity, Chris developed and executed on the business plan, was intimately involved in finding and hiring initial executive personnel and managed the company overall. Participant’s first slate of movies — Syriana, starring George Clooney and Matt Damon; North Country, starring Charlize Theron; Good Night and Good Luck, starring David Strathairn and George Clooney, and the documentary Murderball – were nominated for an unprecedented 11 Academy Awards. Chris is also proud to have identified and helped to develop former Vice President Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth which won the Oscar for Best Documentary and Gore’s work participated in his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In addition to the above-mentioned films, Chris developed and Executive Produced Participant’s first feature: American Gun starring Marcia Gay-Harden, Forrest Whittaker, Donald Sutherland, Linda Cardelini and Tony Goldwyn.

[tags]Chris Adams, Super Fans, social marketing, social media, Digital Hollywood[/tags]

About Outside Voice:

Chey’s show delves into the hot-button social and political issues of the week, Outside Voice delivers a fresh perspective, and a chance for anyone to participate in the discussion. You can chat with public figures, analysts, and entertainers as Chey conducts a virtual town hall meeting that is smart, timely, and interactive. Add your voice every Wednesday, 7pm- 8pm PST.

[tags]Chey Bell, NowLive, podcasting, podcast promotion, social media, super fans, Digital Hollywood[/tags]