Responding to Comments on Blogs
Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development
Hello readers and welcome back to the Silentblast Blog. This article is more or less a follow up to the blog article I did on Blogs– To Allow or Not Allow Comments but more specifically to the issue of responding to commentary on your own blog posts should you have made the decision to allow comments on your blog.
What most of you should and will have to understand about commentary on blogs is like all things in life there will be good and there will be bad. There is a saying so to speak that is more or less an equation; Internet + Anonymity = ***hole. There is a lot of truth actually in that equation. I have been across various blogs and forums and you will be sure to read commentary to an article or forum post that has been hijacked in some shape or form by an individual or group of individuals who post way off the topic in usually the most vulgar form of way to their commentary.
With a blog, you can set the commentary permissions so that you have to go into the “Dashboard” using WordPress as your blogging engine as an example and approve the commentary. Free speech purists view this more or less as censorship and while there is no argument to the context of the meaning of the word censorship as they apply it; I think they fail in understanding sometimes that speech or the written word comes with responsibility.
So where is the line in a commentary you may receive on your blog that will determine whether you approve it or not; let alone as well you have the ability to edit them? The line so to speak is up to the individual or business that is operating the blog in my view. For example I control the blog for Silentblast and decide what commentary is approved or not. I have been pretty transparent in my approving in that I have allowed comments that were not entirely favorable; mainly to me or what I have written about. As long as they didn’t cross over into outright attacks or vulgarity; I have allowed them and then commented on them.
In my responses I have endeavored to not attack back because it is not professional from a business perspective. This I would highly recommend because all that is going to happen is a back and forth match that just makes your blog look bad, your business and the person writing the articles. Now if you answer with some tongue and cheek type humor to me that is fair game as long as you’re generally nice. In my view, nothing is wrong with a bid of a scolding because at the end of the day everyone should play nice in the sandbox.
Do you have to respond to each and every comment? I don’t thinks so. But if for example you receive 6 comments on a particular blog posting and they are all generally commenting in the same fashion or asking possibly the same line of questions; you should respond at least once in that thread of comments and absolutely answer the questions.
If the substance of the questions are significant enough you should create another blog post specific to the questions as a follow up blog article. It is positive to your blog obviously but it also shows you are actively responding to those who do comment on your blog. You should as part of your business blogging strategy set aside time to review comments to your blog and answer the questions or comments that other leave.
Doing so will begin slowly a culture or commentary on your blog which is good in the development of your blog. It takes time to get responses to articles. I will be the first to readily admit that I love seeing comments to articles I have written. I don’t think there is a blogger on the planet that doesn’t like some type of positive commentary obviously. Bloggers just understand that sometimes the comments will not be nice and you just have to deal with it professionally.
Silentblast Interactive - Toronto Web Design and Development
Canadian owned and operated, Silentblast is a professional web design and development company in Toronto serving small and mid-sized companies in the GTA, Brampton, Vaughan, North York, Markham, Mississauga, Oakville, Richmond Hill, Scarborough and Barrie, Ontario, Canada. Silentblast also develops mobile web site design and development and mobile applications for the iPhone and other mobile phone platforms.
Website – www.silentblast.com
Silentblast Blog – www.silentblast.com/blog
Twitter – http://twitter.com/silentblast
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