10 Reasons You Should Be Using Blog Comments

10 Reasons You Should Be Using Blog Comments Ask anyone how they promote their blog, and chances are pretty good that commenting on other blogs wont top the list. Most of us turn to social media to promote our blogs  because it works, and works quickly and measurably. With all of the social media outlets available, and a recent startling movement by a few large blogs to close blog comment sections, its easy to dismiss the idea of using your precious time going to blogs and leaving comments. Often, the comments you see are either great post, thanks!, blatant link spam, or (horrors) like something youd find in YouTube. Why Are Blog Comments Losing Favor? Bloggers have a love-hate relationship with their own blog comment section, too, for several reasons. Blog comments are not great for measurement. Judging your blog by the comments section can be disheartening. Though the number of comments helps towards your social proof, it is often less an indicator of actual readership and more an indicator of how controversial your post is. The truth is, blog comment numbers arent an accurate indicator of actual readership. Most readers dont participate on your blog, a phenomenon known as participation inequality. This means that 90% of the people lurk and dont participate, while 1% account for most of the participation. (Nielsen Norman Group) This means, as Nielsen pointed out, that blog comment sections arent a good place to get feedback because 1% of the people doing the talking might not be the most ideal percentage to base changes on. You might have nine readers that love what youre writing, but if you only hear from the one that doesnt (and more often than not, people are spurred on by a negative reaction to leave a comment), it is disheartening. Blog comments are tempting for spammers. Incessant spamming is one of the reasons Copyblogger decided to close the comment section on their blog. The amount of time it took to police spam comments, and the sheer volume, was a tipping point. In a little over eight years, Copyblogger has published more than 130,000 approved comments. Which is pretty amazing, right? But over that period, that’s only about 4% of the comments that were left on the site. The remaining 96% were pointless, time-wasting spam. Thats over 3 million spam comments that Copyblogger has had thrown their direction!  On my low-traffic personal WordPress blog, I am frequently blown away by the amount of spam I receive in the comments. In just a few months, the numbers climb high. Granted, I have a plugin in place to catch nearly all of it (as does Copyblogger), but there are still a handful each day that gets by and end up in my email asking for moderation. I can only imagine how much Copyblogger had to deal with. Numbers that big are terrifying to some degree when I realize how quickly, without a simple spam plugin, my blogs comment section would a disaster. Spammers are incredibly sneaky. Ever get one of those comments that you just cant be sure if its spam or not, its that real? Spammers know that many bloggers require moderation only on the first comment made on a site. Once theyve been approved, they have free rein. So they leave a comment that you decide is real, and open the door to them. The threat of spammers, and the wasted time dealing with them, is exhausting. Blog comments have to be moderated. When it comes to comments on my personal blog, I have my WordPress settings as tight as they can be and a strict policy in place as to what kinds of comments Ill allow (no insulting me or other readers, stay on topic, no excessively foul language, etc.).  Spammers and the bad behavior of netizens  have forced me to moderate my comments when in the early days of blogging I took pride in letting the discussion unfold in real time sans moderation. I regret that I have to moderate, but without moderation, conversation can turn ugly. Bloggers are responsible for what appears on their blog; it is their property. You do not want to allow questionable comments that insult, attack, threaten or suggest harm to another person. While logical fallacies, overused memes, and trolls are probably inevitable even in legitimate comments, most of the truly awful you can head off at the pass by simply keeping it from being published. Moderation of blog comments means comments dont appear right away. It means some commenters dont understand why their comments dont appear and they submit multiple similar comments. It means some folks get upset when they dont see their legitimate comment right away and get after you for censoring   them (yep, its happened to me). But without moderation of comments, your blog will be spam central. Long and short of it? Because of spammers and people who cant behave, your comment section is going to take some effort to maintain and protect. Moderation will be required. Bloggers are afraid of Google. The idea of your comments section somehow bringing a penalty to your site is terrifying to bloggers. Though Matt Cutts has reassured bloggers that taking part in blog comments in a legitimate way is perfectly fine, recent penalty action taken by Google has bloggers a bit on edge. With good moderation and spam controls, and making sure that links in the comments section are no follow (which WordPress now does) you can protect yourself somewhat. It is important to take a serious rein on your comments section and be purposeful about it. You dont have to be afraid of SEO penalties as long as you protect your own comments section and dont use other blogs comments sections as a way to spam for your own site. Conversation is on the social networks, not the blog. Another reason Copyblogger provided for ending their comments was that the discussion was happening elsewhere, on social media.  This is discouraging if you are trying to build social proof on your actual blog, and see social media comment streams as a form of sharecropping your content off of your blog property. A blog comments section might seem antiquated in the face of this new conversation. If youve been blogging a while, youve probably noticed that social media has meant two things for your blog comments: They have dwindled considerably as people go to social media. The comments are shorter as social media shortens attention spans or gives people a place to write their own thoughts. (In the early days of blogging, some blog commenters had no blogs; they used blog commenting as the way they built their online reputation and authority.) Comment systems, though, are evolving. Plugins that support social media integration, or a comment system like Disqus, help tie your blogs comments into that social pulse. In that sense, you can bring that outside conversation back onto your own property. People are doing it wrong. Yes, some people (as in, you and me an others) arent doing the whole blog commenting thing the right way. Its hard to have purely altruistic motives, sometimes. What is it were doing? Well We participate in blog comments for linking purposes.  If you head into it at all thinking that youll get a link back to your site, youre doing it wrong. Youll be moderated, spammed, and possibly penalized. All we have to say is nice post, good job.  A comment section is for conversation. While Im familiar with the feeling of enjoying a post, having nothing to say, but wanting to let the blogger know, it would be better to share the post on social media and say this was a good post rather than create acres of comments that say good job. Anyone else roll their eyes when trying to sift through good job! and I agree! comments to get to something meatier? Were trolls. Were just there to argue and be jerks. Lets admit it. Weve all lost it in a blog comments section somewhere, and hang our heads in shame at who we became. We dont understand our comment is in the wrong place. How many times have you read a blog post where the author helpfully suggested a tech fix of some sort, just to be kind, and the comment section quickly fills with people (of all temperaments) wanting help from the author troubleshooting why it didnt work?   Sometimes we mistake a blog post on a particular topic as the place to go for help on that topic, and it isnt. Blog comments are for the strong. New to blogging? You may or may not be ready for the emotional toll some blog comments can take on you, depending upon what kind of posts you write and how much of a flashpoint your topics are. Blog comments can be hurtful and discouraging if you let them get to you. Even if you moderate them, you are still going to read them whether you publish them or not. It can be an open door to letting people shred or mock what was a very important thing to write about. If you are prone to taking things personally or are unable to distance yourself from what random strangers say to you, blog comments can be a real drag on your motivation to keep blogging. On the other hand, if you stick with it, you learn a very valuable skill: how to ignore people who are insignificant in your life. Comments on your blog will either give you a thick skin or cause you to give up.Why Blog Comments Are Important After reading all of that–practically an entire blog post on why you should abandon blog comments ASAP!–you might be convinced to do just that. Surely they arent worth the hassle or the threat of your innocent blog commenting activity creating a penalty for your blog. Hold on just a minute. Most of us arent Copyblogger, and arent experiencing the level of spam they were. Most of us dont have the volume of conversation happening elsewhere that they do; our social media conversations are smaller and need a home base on the blog. And, most importantly, participating in the comment sections of blogs does have a positive impact. All of the negatives aside, I love blog comments on a carefully moderated blog. Why? 1. Discover new blogs. I have probably found more useful sites, links, information, and downloads not through online searches but by people in blog comment sections sharing a relevant source. Plus, a well-written comment with a thoughtful take on the topic will often cause me to visit the website of the commenter. That comment is a preview of how their blog posts will be. I have found a huge chunk of the blogs I load into my RSS reader through blog comments sections, and where do you suppose I turn when I want to find content to share? That RSS reader. Taking time and leaving a relevant, useful comment is a way to bring people over to your website. Plugging yourself shamelessly in every post is a turn-off. 2. Learn more about the topic. A well-researched blog post isnt all there is to say on a topic. Word count or time restrictions can keep your ultimate guide blog post from not quite being the ultimate guide. The experience, knowledge, and resources commenters can bring to your post in the comment section add to the understanding of the topic. Im fairly certain, for example, that when you get to the end of this post, youll be thinking she forgot to mention this important thing and youll take it upon yourself to mention it (hint hint). Thats the beauty of blog comments: readers get to help build on the original post, helping the author and other readers learn more about the topic. Whether opposing view or adding to the supporting view, theres more to be said about most topics, and readers can help each other by commenting. 3. The enjoyment of being a regular. A coffee shop near where I work knows what Im going to order before I order it. I love that. I love going in and having them pick up the conversation where we left off. Its the joy of being a regular. The comment section of your blog is where the regulars (or the usual suspects, if its that kind of blog :-) gather. They know each other, they know your blog and can link back to old posts or other specific comments from the past. Regulars help turn your blog from being a sequential posting of articles into something organic that references itself. Plus, theres the ownership issue. I have had a handful of people who have read and commented on my personal blog for more than ten years, some of whom Ive met and weve become real-life friends. When you comment (and get response) regularly on a blog, you almost feel like you have ownership there, that its important you stay involved. Thats exactly the kind of reader and commenter you want.  Heck, some regulars even police the comments section and help you, as if they were forum moderators. They feel like its partly their place, too, and they want to help keep it clean. Blog comment sections are like the coffee house of the internet, where you introduce the discussion and let the regulars get busy discussing it. 4. Networking that works. Taking part in your own blog comment section shows the world youre not a hermit.  It says that you   are not just a one-way street, blasting your content out to them but unwilling to hear them back. (This is especially important if you are trying to build your blog traffic and get a bigger audience.) Being a one-way content pusher is sort of the equivalent of handing out business cards en masse and not bothering to do much listening as you turn around and walk away. It doesnt work. The back and forth conversation in blog comments, and and honest willingness to listen, is good networking. Just like you find new blogs to read, you make connections with the other regulars and break free of the limited circles of your social media. Blog comment sections bring in people you might not have discovered, otherwise, and truly expand your networking circles. One-sided networking never works. In order to make connections that matter, we have to be willing to give and take, and meet people outside of our usual social groups. 5. People link to where theyre being talked about. Ive found that if I have written a post that is getting some serious comment action, involving other bloggers and asking questions often leads to them writing a post about the conversation, and linking to my original post.  When Ive had a long run in a comment section and been actively participating, and I think Ive left some pretty good comments, you know what I do? I link to the post and often blog about it. It functions on the same principle as why small town newspapers run so many photos of the local sports team. I learned early on as a small town newspaper reporter that mentioning the names of people in the community in stories, and featuring their kids in school activities, was how you sold papers. Its the same reason people buy that expensive Whos Who book: theyre listed in it. We like to promote whats promoting us. 6. Easier-to-follow conversations. A lot of conversation happens on social media, sure, but it isnt always easy to follow. Some might be on Twitter (where following a discussion is like chasing the tail of a kite on a windy day), others on Google+. Different people saying interesting things, but because those multiple conversations are on different platforms? Never the two shall meet. And, conversation on social media fades away as the news feeds change. Its always been a frustration of mine that this happens. Admittedly, some of the social features of some comment systems that adjust the order of the comments according to votes by readers can be confusing, as they arent a threaded in-order conversation. While that technique helps commenters police out bad comments (in theory) it does add to confusion, too. But, at least all of the discussion is in one place. Taking part in blog comment sections makes it easier for readers who find the post to follow along and make sense of how the discussion goes. Latecomers can see what has already been said. 7. Social proof for your blog. If you see a listing of four blog posts, three with 6 comments listed, and one with 145 comments listed, which post are you going to dive into? Probably the 145-comment post. Clearly there is something going on there and lots of people are actively talking. We like to see what others are talking about, and we are more likely to join in because there are enough others in the conversation that it wont be too terrifying (this is especially true for lurkers who dont participate much). This is social proof in action, the idea that where we see a crowd, there must be something good.  Asking questions in your own comments is a good way to keep the ball rolling. Comments help encourage other comments; its a very good reason to respond to comments in your blog posts. Blog comments are great social proof. The more you have, the more you get.8. Get new ideas for fresh content. Has this ever happened to you? You write a post about topic. The discussion is active, and you find yourself leaving long comments. Pretty soon you think its probably best to write a whole new blog post because the topic has expanded and given you a lot to talk about, all thanks to the blog comments section. At the very least, youve probably found yourself realizing that there were questions or directions your readers have suggested that would make a great new blog post (or two or three). Thats happened here on this blog, even. It was in our blog comments where a reader brought up the need for social proof. It was a comment that piqued my curiosity and got me doing some research. I eventually wrote a blog post. Ive also written blog posts based on comments found on other blogs, too. Inevitably, I link back to the other blog (win for them), and I get a great post idea (win for me). Plus, I have a legitimate reason to leave a comment and say I wrote a post about this here and perhaps get some new readers. The comment section is a great place for idea generation. Its a group of people, batting ideas around.