Omonaikee: What do you do after reading what I write?

October 09, 2015

What do you do after reading what I write?

Like? Comment? Share? Or call to tell me how great a writer I am?

I'll admit I want to be able to say I get tons and tons and tons of traffic to this blog and that everything I post online gets lots and lots of comments, but the reality is sometimes I check and recheck my own posts on Bella Naija several times a day just to count the number of comments and on some days my own visits to this blog rack up the daily traffic more than those of real visitors, so yeah I'm not up there when it comes to those metrics.

But when I ask myself what my Call To Action for each post is (Call To Action (CTA) is a term for that element crafted into your posts that makes the reader act in a way you want, for instance buy a product or click a link), I realise my CTA is not like, comment, share or buy but it's think. And if I get lucky it's think, change and act.

I hardly leave comments on the best blogs I read. And it's not because the author's talent doesn't deserve appreciation or the content can be overlooked, but I'm silent because what they say leaves me deep in thought.

I've read things so powerful that rather than like or comment, I have reclined in my seat to chew food for thought or stood up and taken a walk just trying to understand why a sentence had hit me and why so hard.

That's the way I hope what I write makes my readers feel. That they consider my thoughts and theirs side by side and come out of that interaction with a new one. That they are engaged, entertained and changed. That in one moment of weakness something they read me write gives them strength or moral resolve.

And those are the best comments; the one where someone says, not I commented but I cried or not I retweeted, shared or reposted but this really helped me.

http://omonaikee.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/how-to-be-happy.html

And occasionally I get to relish those comments where someone says "thanks for sharing", and I know that those moments spent capturing fleeting memory and minutiae emotion, and mining words of hope from depths of suffering are absolutely worth it!