FRIENDSHIP AND RECIPROCATION
Almost everyone has seen the Disney movie "Bambi". If so, you'll remember what Thumper's mother told him when he was making fun of the newborn Bambi; "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all."
I've been asked, "How did you get so many fans/followers/friends here?" The answer is common courtesy.
Many people just want to collect "friends", but they have no idea how to be one. I don't try to collect anyone. People are not collectibles. I look at it as a symbiotic relationship. In a symbiotic relationship, you get out of it as much as you put into it. It's very true that one hand washes the other. I will in all likelihood never get to know these people except for what I read that they have written online, so I start from there, actually reading what they write.
If someone comments on something I've written, even if it's just a forum post, I always try to reply specifically to that person, and if I can't, I at least reply to the group of posts or comments.
When someone leaves a comment on your article, you should immediately seek out their articles, and comment on one of them, and make as thoughtful a comment as they made on yours. It only takes a couple of minutes a day, and believe me, it's something you never want to forget to do.
I went through a time when I was a taker, not a giver. I didn't even reply to comments, much less reciprocate. I found myself on a lot of people's "do not visit" lists, because they felt slighted. I started getting NO comments, and in anger, I just stopped writing. Bad move.
Places like Hub pages, Squidos, Gather, etc. are COMMUNITIES. They are a group of people who do the same thing...write. They may not all have the same goals, but they want to be acknowledged, as we all do in all of our efforts. It may only take 30 minutes to write an article, but it's part of you, and you want someone to say it was worth those 30 minutes of your life.
So be a good neighbor, even a friend. Everyone started with one article, and they by and large went around commenting on other's articles to get some attention to theirs. So if someone comments on your article, even if it's a long time fan or friend, reciprocate, and believe me, what you gain in online friendships, respect, and even love will multiply many times. If someone becomes your fan/friend, consider becoming theirs. What can it hurt?
Of course, there are some instances where you don't want to reciprocate, and that's o.k. I find that on Twitter, for example, there are a lot of spammers who follow me, hoping I'll follow them. I check out their posts, and see that every single one is Spam, and I simply block them.
I believe in karma, that what you put out comes back to you in multiples of three. I also believe that to make a friend, you have to be a friend. None of us is an island, and on this huge, sometimes lonely sea that internet writers sail, a little friendly breeze to push us forward is.
