27.Jul.2010 How hard do you make it for people to have a discussion on your blog?
This topic comes up a lot with small business and blogging clients. How hard – or easy – should they make it for visitors to their blog to leave a comment on an article?
Obviously, the more interaction and social engagement you have on your blog, the better it is, but I see lots of my clients making it quite difficult and in one case impossible for people to leave a comment on their blog articles and thereby start a discussion with other readers.
Actually, I used to be one of them.
I know I harp on about how good Glenn Murray‘s ebook SEO Secrets – The DIY Guide to Topping Google was for my business but this is yet another lesson I learnt from it – you should make it easy as possible for visitors to leave a comment on your blog.
On most blogs there seems to be one of three options: make the reader sign up to your site before they can leave a comment, let anyone leave a comment but moderate every one of them before they are published, or just leave it to open slather and anyone who wants to comment can – and that comment appears straight away.
The last one sounds downright scary, and yet it’s the one that Glenn advocates – and the one that I have chosen for all of my blogs.
What if nutters leave something profane or idiotic or just copious amount of spam? What if they disagree with me? Let’s look at each of these in turn.
Nutbags leaving weird and profane comments and increased spam on my blog
Since I changed my blogs over (and they are all based on WordPress so I can only comment for blogs using the same platform) more than six months ago AND activated Akismet I have had two spam comments in more than 300 comments. I have probably had another two comments which I deemed were not appropriate for my readership to have to see. That’s not bad odds really.
You still have to monitor what is being said on your blog and in fact, best practice is that you are not only monitoring it, but interacting with it, which brings me to the second point.
What if they disagree with me?
Some people would say that if your readership is disagreeing with you, then you are doing a good job as a blogger. I don’t necessarily believe that’s true but there is nothing more engaging than the presentation averse to how the status quo thinks.
A lot of my small business blogging clients have told me when I have asked them what they do when they get a negative comment on their blog, they just delete it as quickly as they can.
In my opinion, this is the worst thing you can do.
Put it in perspective: if someone rants on your blog comments and is obvious to the rest of the world to be a crazy person, I would probably just leave their comment there (unless it was hateful or profane), after all that’s what makes the world go round.
But if someone presents a well-balanced, thought out opinion that is different to yours, they are presenting the perfect opportunity for you to interact directly with them for all the world to see. Not everyone is going to agree with everything you do (Geez, lots of people will disagree with my advice in this very post!), but as long as you blog honestly and present your opinion in a considered and reasonable way, why wouldn’t you want there to be some discussion – even if it is opposing to your point of view?
Do you agree or disagree with engaging negative comments? How do you moderate comments on your blog, or do you leave it open for anyone to comment?
Please let me know in the comments below. You don’t need to sign up or anything to leave a comment, just put it in below and your comment will appear straight away.
