Four Tips for Encouraging Smart Comments on Your Blog

This post on six ways to lose your readership got me thinking about ways that bloggers can encourage readers to visit their blogs, especially in how they moderate their comments sections, which is something I didn’t see discussed in that post.

So, here are a few tips for fostering and maintaining healthy discussion in the comments section of your blog. If you have any ideas to add, please feel free to drop them in the comments section!

Clean Out Spam

In order to keep your commenters happy and create the environment for a healthy discussion, it’s imperative that you delete all spam comments as quickly as possible. Of course, there are plenty of good spam filtering widgets out there that you can use on your blog; however, even these sometimes miss the better disguised spam. So always be vigilant. Nothing shows that a blogger doesn’t care about his blog more than the presence of spam in the comments section.

Allow Commenters a Backlink

Another thing that will attract commenters to your blog is if you allow them to have a do-follow link in their comments. Of course, this will really open your blog up to spam comments or comments by people who simply want to get that link, so that’s a tradeoff that you’ll have to consider before you implement that feature.

Follow a Clear Comment Moderation Policy

If you do allow do-follow comments, then you should consider announcing a clear comment moderation policy to encourage sincere discussion in your comments sections.

For example, you could say that you will delete all comments that are simply statements of agreement or disagreement. Of course, you’ll have consequences of this moderation policy, so do keep those in mind. Likewise, you could allow all comments, except obvious spam; however, if you do that, you will have to deal with trolling comments and other empty comments as well. Whatever moderation policy you choose to follow, you should uphold it fairly.

Respond to Comments

Finally, when you actually do get worthwhile comments on your posts, you should be sure to respond smartly and say thanks for the comment. This will show your commenters that you are paying attention to what they have to say. It also makes you more accessible to them.

Instead of being the blogger behind the curtain, you are actually open to interacting with your readers. This is really important in this day and age of social networking. A blog cannot survive without that kind of interaction between its readers and the webmaster.

This is a guest post by Mariana Ashley, a freelance writer who particularly enjoys writing about online colleges. She loves receiving reader feedback, which can be directed to mariana.ashley031@gmail.com. If you want to guest post here, check out the guidelines.

Image Credit: Wheatfields>

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14 comments

Maria Pavel March 6, 2011 - 9:08 pm
Good article by Mariana, but i believe she missed an important point: the article. You can attract comments with it by more than one way, but two come to mind right now, make it controversial and people will feel obligated to respond and state their opinions, and you can also ask the readers some questions at the end of the article to show them you value their opinion. It's true this probably wouldn't bring as many comments as a do-follow link would, but those comments would be more real and decrease the number of spammers.
Ghana jobs March 10, 2011 - 5:30 am
Spamming is one of the internet plagues that make blogging uninteresting. In as much as one may not completely fight off spammers from his blog, generating quality contents from genuine readers is a blogging aspiration. I have come to realize that aritcles closed with a question or thought provoking ending tends to generate more genuine and sincere comments since everyone would try to represent his opinion. ofcourse this is in addition to other points listed above.
Johanna @ GIJoh.com March 6, 2011 - 11:52 pm
Hi Mariana, This sure is a simple yet straightforward forward post, but there are some bloggers who don't take into consideration these kinds of things when it comes to comments. There are others who accept comments that say "Nice post, keep it up" and so on. I'd rather have a few relevant comments than approve those ones. From my experience, so far, if you make your posts interesting and you leave a question or two at the end of every article, then chances are you'd get your desired feedback from your valued readers. Thanks for sharing! :)
ZK March 7, 2011 - 4:02 pm
You are right, a lot of times I get comments like - "Great article" , "Good Post" etc and I end up spending a lot of time deleting such comments that add no value.... This is a very relevant post for me to announce that such comments henceforth on this blog will not be approved :) ...I am hoping we can keep the blog clean from spam comments and comments that are made only to get listed. Let your voice be heard based on comments and interactions that add value to the readers. Valuable comments that you make will only add to your credibity as an authorative figure on the subject.
Alexis March 7, 2011 - 4:04 pm
I've been failing to clean my spams. Allowing commentators a backlinks is fair in my view as long as some people don't abuse it.One of the thing that motivate me to leave comment is definitely the content. If the blog post does not give me any value I'll not leave any comment at all.
Ken March 7, 2011 - 6:36 pm
Hi Mariana, I think it's both beneficial to the blog owner and the commenter if the blog is dofollow. Yes it does bring a ton of spammers to your blog looking for a backlink with a short, blatantly obvious spam post but I think for every spammer you also have someone there that cares about what they're reading and really wants to contribute to the post and the discussion in the comments. This really helps your blog so I agree that leaving it a dofollow blog is very beneficial. In my opinion every dofollow blog should also have the comment policy link listed above the comment box so people who really want their comment approved by the moderator will not have to go looking for the comment policy if they have any questions. I've seen a handful of blogs like this and I must say that it really helps. I've also seen many more posts lately that asks a question at the end of their posts and I've seen that lead to a more in-depth comment section.
Kavya Hari March 8, 2011 - 5:34 am
Hi Mariana, these four points would be very useful for all the blogger without any doubts. Comment which could be more important and it will give encouragement to the writer, so comment would be more vital point. Thanks a lot for sharing your valuable points on here.
John @ Channel Letters March 8, 2011 - 3:34 pm
yeah you are right, even i am fed up with lots of spammy comments, these four points would be very useful for all the blogger without any doubts.
Alex March 9, 2011 - 8:59 am
Hello Mariana, I think that answering your comments can take care of your spam problem, because to answer you have to first read them which in turn can help you judge if the comment is spam or not. Usually dofollow links and a high PR attracts a lot of one-time hitters or people that just leave one line comments to get sip of that PR goodie. This is a possible problem, because they might just leave a comment (normal, readable interesting comment) but then never come back, you know that they are doing it for the link and that they will never come back but you can't delete it either because it actually makes sense. This is why, in my opinion, you should have an email alert for your comments and send them a notice when you answer their comments.
Article Writing Expert March 10, 2011 - 8:25 am
It is important to engage with the reader so that you will be able to get feedback. Triggering the emotional hot buttons of your visitor is the key to gaining more and more visitors, and also for sustaining the current readers. Awesome post!
College Textbooks March 10, 2011 - 6:36 pm
Those are excellent tips. Especially about getting spammy commenters out. There is a christian blog I read and they actually have links to unrelated and spammy sites there. Its weird because the site has good articles just lets anyone post.
Jasmine March 13, 2011 - 6:00 am
You are right, it is ultra important to moderate your comments and make sure there is no spammy comments being displayed on your blog. Good tips you are sharing here!
Agilito September 5, 2011 - 4:23 pm
I agree, but what's the problem? It is easy to defend against common yet spambots, knowing the basics of programming. Somewhere kedyś was described how to defend against such spamming.
Blogging Tipster November 28, 2011 - 4:52 am
Very informative post!! Comments on our blog posts are really important as feedback from readers is what drives the bloggers.I can think of a few points too: It is really important to make commenting easy for the readers. We could do this by giving one word options to the readers like Good Post, Informative, Not Good, etc which the readers could just click, need not type. We could invite the readers to complete our list posts by adding the last point to the list post. We could organize for comment contests.
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