Are Blog Comments Worth It?
A few days ago, Engadget turned off comments on its posts — a move which, ironically, reignited discussion about the value of blog comments in a world pulsing with social media.
Some sites I’ve worked on have inspired commenting that I could only describe as pitiable drivel; others, like WWD, seem to inspire respectful, well-thought out opinions from informed readers. I used to think this was a matter of where the site pitched within the market, and who used it. The Engadget story convinces me that content topic also influences the tone, quality, and usefulness of comment contributions. But I’m sure there are other factors as well: the kinds of content you’re presenting, the degree of opinion included in that content, and so on.
Thus, for those working online, with a plethora of social media to manage, countless personal and direct messages to respond to, and, hey, a bit of work to do as well, the question arises: are blog comments worth it?
Comment Pros and Cons
When I first read about Engadget’s move, I thought “this looks like a step back to the traditional publication model, where the publisher controlled what was said. It negates the notion of free speech — of free broadcast — that the web was lauded for putting in everyone’s hands.”
The no-comment approach seems to say, “Yes, everyone can have a web site and publish their own content, but some of them aren’t prepared to talk about it, or support others in talking about it.” After all, one of the benefits of blog comments is that your users don’t need their own site, social network account, email address, or even greater awareness of the market space in order to connect with you. In an era that’s all about dialog, denying on-site dialog seems counterproductive and unsupportive.
The case against comments is usually that comment moderation is too time consuming to be sustainable. If, as Engadget argues, the commenting populace is only a small portion of the overall audience, those comments are unlikely to lead to significantly higher traffic levels or ad revenues. As has been pointed out by many of the people who’ve commented (via Twitter and other avenues) on this move, removing comments means less garbage, faster page load times, and a better user experience.
With the growing wealth of social media at our fingertips, site owners could find that avoiding a single channel that’s not proving advantageous is of benefit, clearing the decks and making it easier to focus on the kinds of communications they do best — and where. And if, like Engadget, the brand is big enough, and its following loyal enough, people will talk about, recommend, and consume the site’s offering regardless.
What About Your Blog?
In my view, there’s an interesting cultural difference between a blog that allows comments and one that does not. A blog that doesn’t allow comments seems to me to be saying “this is the final word on this topic.” To me it seems there’s something formal about such publications — they distance themselves from users; they hold themselves up as a paragon rather than engaging “on the level” with users.
In many cases, this could be ideal. Engadget, for example, isn’t like WWD. Here, we ask for comments, we want to engage, and we aim to build a creative dialog that enriches the initially published content. Engadget provides straight-up news and reviews of technology. So perhaps that site is less about community than about providing information. Perhaps facilitating on-site dialog isn’t central to the site’s strategy. Perhaps cementing the brand’s position as The Last Word on a given topic by relieving the site of comment facilities does, in fact, support that strategy.
What about your blog, though? Do you think you could successfully pull off removing comments? Would it upset your readership? Would it undermine your relationship with them? In short: how important are blog comments to your own engagement with your audience?
Photo by flickr user Desirée Delgado, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
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We addressed this exact topic yesterday in a post on Fuel and gave it a purposely conflicting title that attempts to get at the heart of the matter: Conversation is Essential. Listening is Optional. I come from the perspective that allowing comments is akin to listening, but one commenter added that it’s a passive kind of listening and that perhaps you could eliminate comments and actually go seeking conversation about your content on various networks. Interesting topic either way you look at it.
I’m sorry to learn that Engadget has turned off its comments, but I understand that there is a “cost” in keeping it open. But most systems allow for blog comments from invited commenters, so perhaps there is a middle ground that serves everyone’s needs.
I love reading comments, sometimes learning a lot from them or being amused by them. However, I do get bothered by snarky comments, so if a site gets inundated with them perhaps turning off the feature is best or letting readers report the abuse with a click to help the site monitor junk comments.
If Engadget wants to maintain a conversation with its visitors, perhaps they can find a middle ground.
Engadget is one of my main ways I get tech news. I was sad to hear they disabled commenting. Comments on a blog are at least 50% of what makes for good content. I’m going to give them a few days and maybe check out Gizmodo if Engadget’s comments aren’t back up. I can imagine the cost of dealing with the spam they must be getting. I don’t know what the answer could be but maybe require registration to leave comments? In a post explaining their comment situation, Engadget stated that a very small amount of readers actually comment. The thing is, it’s impossible to measure the number of people who read comments but never post any. I have a feeling that is a very large percentage of readers and disabling comments would adversely affect them.
Just checked the site, looks like they enables comments again.
It’s funny really, I like having comments on my blog because I like talking to the people that read it. However.
My market (ie, the people I’m really writing for) don’t actually leave comments – most of the comments are left by fellow bloggers. All in all, I still think it’s worth it, but you have to wonder really. I think that if Engadget can pull it off good for them, but for the majority of us comments are more than worthwhile.
I love getting comments on my blog, it helps fuel discussion and allows readers to feel like they can become involved in the conversation (not to mention catch mistakes I may have made).
However, many times in reading posts on huge blogs, a post may get 200+ comments, and reading through them, 90% of them are comments just to get their link added to the post, they don’t add anything to the conversation. Spam, no other way to put it. I woud imagine if I had to sift through stuff like that every day, I might consider closing comments too. Unfortunate to see, but I understand how someone could make that decision.
As I understood Engadget’s move, it was always supposed to be a temporary measure only, and in fact, they just recently turned commenting back on.
Anyone who pays attention to comments on blogs, let alone is responsible for moderating blog comments should have some small appreciation of how invasive and abusive some commenters can be. In addition to flat-out spam comments, high-volume sites like Engadget seem to draw out some really nasty people. I can completely appreciate Engadget’s position here – these trolls were adversely affecting the experience of a whole bunch of desirable users, and there was no better solution than to take a temporary break.
I don’t believe that Engadget ever seriously thought about not having commenting at all for the positive reasons you indicated.
Leo Babauta of Zen Habits turned off his comments as well:
http://zenhabits.net/2010/02/faq/
I’m undecided, but I’m leaving the comments on for now.
They’re useless unless you have an assistant to moderate and delete all the worthless crap that people post.
Comments are a must for me. The only blog I read frequently without comments is Seth Godin’s one. And I would read it more if it had comments. To me, turning comments off is like saying that you are afraid to discuss about your content.
However, there are two things about comments that I don’t like:
-Lack of integration with RSS. I use GReader and only go to the website to check comments if I really like the article. I miss all the others.
-If there are too much I won’t read them. Maybe there are some great ones, but it looks too time consuming. Stars and likes help with this, but still a problem.
I agree that comment moderation could be a lot better in terms of promoting quality insights. I think I learn as much from our commenters at GigaOM as I do from my official sources.
I don’t feel that comments are necesarily a must; for me, it totally depends on the content — some blogs don’t really need comments, while some others (Metafilter, for example) I really only read for the comments.
WWD wouldn’t be the same without comments, but a comments moderation system that surfaces the better ones would be nice.
We don’t really suffer from trolls, but a big part of the commenting problem is the semi-spam comments, which add nothing to the conversation in the hope of getting a link back (I end up deleting a lot of these from WWD). They tend to drown out the better comments and discourage people from posting them. I still think comments are useful (a really great comment can be insightful and spark further discussion), but if you don’t have the time to moderate them, you might be better off without.
I know I wouldn’t turn off comments. Usually when I am done reading a blog, the next thing I do is read the comments to see what everyone else had to say. Everyone is different and people tend to see things in a different light. I am always curious to see what someone else is saying that doesn’t think like I do. I also think there are other important functions of comments like feedback, conversations and what not.
I often times learn more details about issues I cover from comments. In fact, a couple times a month someone will leave a comment that updates the story (e.g. an update on a lawsuit, a change in company strategy) that I use to write entirely new articles.
I also use the number and type of comments as a signal of what my readers care about. Last Saturday I wrote a post late at night that I thought was just decent. I awoke in the morning to about 40 comments. Apparently it was more interesting than I thought.
The problem seems to be with bigger, more mainstream sites. The quality of comment on TechCrunch is usually low (or at least you have to sift through hundreds of bad comments to find them). But hey, they’re better than the comments on YouTube.
As a really new blogger, I value the comments. It gives me a good qualitative feel for what resonated with readers in addition to the blog stats. In a company, there’s a cost to managing them but I’d argue that the cost is less than “not listening to customers”.
I thought the whole purpose of blogging was to share new ideas, concept, and thoughts. If you take comments of blogs this does not occur, so what is the purpose of your blogs then? When you close your mind you halt the learning process!
Well to begin with Endadget is little more than a press release publishing platform, augmented by a few enthusiast speculators. They are effectively one big ad for electronics companies. So dialogue was never high on their agenda anyway.
My opinion is: it depends. I understand why bigger sites turn off comments in most cases. My own personal site I don’t have comments turned on for most posts because there is no point in commenting on them. I’m writing something. If you want to read it thats cool but I’m not interested in comments. When I post something Java-related I usually do have comments on because the point of the post is to help someone and comments are the way for them to ask for more information on something I’ve written.
Comments certainly are useful in many ways but for sites like Engadget I just dont see how they add enough value to make it worth the headache of managing them.
Well even on a news site, comments CAN add value. For instance by taking the subject further. Or sometimes even providing insights and context the writer didnt include, or didnt know.
One cant in the same breadth agree that crowdsourcing is of legitimate value then in the same breadth say that user commentaty is useless. But it has to be harnessed properly – and filtered. There is no free lunch there. This we also know. So its up to the news sites to figure out how to moderate – or verify identity to discourage yahoos.
But like I said, when you are mostly a thinly disguised press release channel, its easy to see why you might shut down user comments – its symptomatic of old school style-broadcast mentality camouflaging itself in new school clothes. Ewen though Engadget is a new brand, their product and approach isnt really innovative or taking things to a new level. They live off of old school ideas of commanding an audience and creating articifical hype for manufacturers of electronics products designed to be “obsolete” in five minutes and replaced again.
I’m wondering if commenting would require a bit less moderation effort if people were not anonymous. I’ve noticed the Globe and Mails FB page has fewer comments than the main web site but the comments (at least on the few I’ve bothered to check) seem to be less incendiary. I’m wondering if that’s because it’s harder for people to be ahem outrageous when they’re easier to find.
I have two different blogs. One I use for work (MeaningToWork.com) and one I use to discuss issues of faith (R3blog.net).
Because their content is so different I have two different comment policies. For the work site I allow comments with little moderation. Work topics tend not to get very “heated.” :)
On the other hand, I turned off the comments for R3 because I didn’t feel like it was right for me to “approve” some comments while “disapproving” of others – even if the others were completely out of bounds. Ironically I feel that turning off the comments makes that site better because there is no “comment overlord” determining what’s allowed to stay and what has to go.
I feel like I’m overanalyzing right now as I type ha ha.
The contribution made by comments is definitely weighted by the audience drawn to a site. I think commnets on most movie/entertainment/video game blogs are unreadable (for example, “casting of the role of X to be announced” and people ARGUE about their imaginary casting decisions). And I hate Apple-MSFT wars.
And the act of complaining isn’t really worth 2 cents if you aren’t engaging people in finding a solution so here’s my “turn a complaint” into a suggestion. COMMENTS ARE WHY MODERATORS ARE USEFUL! If you run your own site it can be excruciating depending on the scale to take time to approve and post comments, I know, but maybe doing a “mail call” type of repost is the way to go and draw repeat viewings to articles.
No comment.
my blog is semi-popular and I don’t really get all that many comments. I don’t think it’s such a necessity.
I don’t see the point of having a blog without comments. If I visit a blog and strongly agree or disagree with the authors point-I want to make a comment. If comments are disabled then I have to find alternative means to contact and it’s just not worth my time. Also-I’d much prefer to have a discussion in a public forum-this allows other to chime in with what could be very valid points.
No comments basically says, ” I don’t care what you have to say.”
There’s also the very sneaky possibility that by turning off comments they force people to make their comments on their own blogs/FB/tweets with links back the way, so it boost traffic and links.
I think unless you’ve got a blog that’s experienced the levels of traffic and commentary that the very top guys enjoy/endure then you’re not really in a position to comment on what it’s like, or what’s fair.
When you breach a level of success, and it started with Godin and Steve Pavlina and now extends to Engadget and Zen Habits, comments must become an absolute nightmare. There’s a reason a lot of the top bloggers end up hiring a VA to moderate their comment systems, but sometimes even that isn’t enough. I can’t even begin to imagine the levels of spam somewhere like Engadget must get. I get hundreds a day on my humble blog, and if there’s a comparable order of magnitude between respective traffic and spam it must be absolutely ridiculous for the A-list bloggers.
I do, however, agree that switching comments off completely and having absolutely no way for the audience to communicate back to you – again, like Seth Godin – does make you look a little like Buddha on the mountaintop. That your word is law. And I also think that in some cases that is the goal.
Of course, the flipside of this is that blogging is cheap or even free and anyone can set up a blog of their own to answer another blogger back. You can’t expect (and certainly not demand) them to provide a mouthpiece for you.
I think it depends on the site.
For example, Daring Fireball is totally against comments. It works for him.
Yet, 37signals.com an equally popular blog, allows comments. In fact, many times the discussions in the comments are phenomenal there. However, they do a good job of moderating the comments to keep the drivel and spam out.
I miss comments on zenhabits.
Here’s the thing about comments, that I think some people miss, is that the ability to comment and communicate connects people. People are social, we can have a conversation about a particular topic. The sites that foster that type of conversation will have value. The challenge is you don’t want the comments to devolve into karaoke night at the bar.
Good thought provoking blogs will inspire conversation. The communication and the conversation will take place somewhere whether it is on Web Worker Daily, Twitter, Facebook, or some other location. That lends value to the website. The comments become another reason for people to stay and another reason for people to come back.
I think the comment spam means that there is probably an opportunity for a company to help clean that up. I know intense debate, and a few others are trying, but nothing has taken over.
A good read. Thanks.
Interaction with others fuels creativity. Destructive trolls require merciless moderation. They can ruin a community. It’s a lot of work, but to eliminate social interactivity as a way to avoid having to moderate seems lazy, especially for a serious, commercial site. To shut it down from time to time to clean house and get moderation in hand seems like smart policy. Like following back on Twitter, listening expands the listener.
Very nicely done post on blog comments. The fact that there are two sides to the debate tells us there is no single, right answer. It can be left to the site owner to decide. The worst example of comments gone wrong are the sports news networks who permit comments that are either personal attacks on other commenters or derogatory ethnic slams against those in the news. Those are just the beginning of what Seth Godin warned would be Internet-enabled degradation of society’s interaction (particularly in maintaining honorable and civil election campaigns). Without better moderation, it will lead to comments being abandoned by all sites.
I think comments are important but I turn off comments on two of my local real estate blogs because they are on a RE network, ActiveRain. ActiveRain members (those in the real estate industry) get points for commenting. Some members cut and paste in the same comment for their max points for the day, saying something generic on 10 blog posts in the network. I will grit my teeth on industry content (peer to peer) and usually ignore the “Great post thanks for sharing” comments from the insincere “robotic point pigs” (coined by J. Philip Faranda) but when I am talking to consumers I can’t handle the comments. It is not like they are bad comments. They just are not conversational. Once the post has been up for a few hours I can allow comments as robotic point pigs do not usually dig deep, they just comment on the newest content usually. Perhaps I would be better off just blogging outside of a network on my WordPress blog.
Nice article. I think comments are definitely worth it. They give you an other possibility of interaction with your readers, much more personal then on Twitter. And as I am new at Blogging, like Tammy, comments tell me whether my post was interesting to my readers or not. I can see though how it can become very time intense if you have thousands of followers and comments to answer… Will see how to handle that if it ever gets to that point :-)
I shall use a comment to tell you that comments are a terrible idea, and rather than attempt to produce a winning persuasive diatribe in the form of a Post-It note attached to your blog, I shall refer you to mine:
http://www.robbyslaughter.com/blog/?2009-11-28
Ironically, I came here to suggest that I usually like comments.
However, I think there’s some very persuasive comments made against them, particularly by Robbie Slaughter. Ironically also made as a comment.
I think if they add to the website, fantastic. However, for the most part – they simply do not.
The examples I can think of where they unequivocally do add to the site are rare though. Sites like Chris Guillebeau’s “The Art of Nonconformity” or occasionally niche sites, where I’ve found good value in some comments on music production sites. Mr Slaughter’s point about comments limiting form and extinguishing quality discourse are pretty bang on – but sometimes a blog post on your own site isn’t a relevant response. Sometimes a quick, short comment (which this is most certainly not) is the perfect solution.
So in short, I think they’re a nice option but probably on particularly high traffic websites, the opportunity you’ve got to gain quality content from them is far outweighed by the spammy junk that most would be.
Leo’s Zen Habits is an interesting example too. Leo doesn’t have comments anymore, but Leo also doesn’t have email. Leo does use Twitter and does have a forum, where people can discuss things. I think this approach probably isn’t a bad idea. It might lack some of the immediacy of a comment, but does allow for relatively quick replies and I think would go some way towards eliminating spam. Having run a couple of (small) blogs and forums myself, even free forum software like PHPBB seems to attract far less spam than does something like wordpress. I don’t know why this is.
There’s several marvelous systems for having online discussions, and attaching them to the bottom of someone else’s blog is not one of them. We should have this conversation as a Twitter thread, on a bulletin board, as an email exchange or somewhere else. I’m saddened that WebWorkerDaily is obligated to host our discussion. This form is not befitting for quality interaction.
At the Atudio Products site, we have the Cennini Forum devoted to providing clear information about the technical aspects of Art (mostly oil painting). Art is one of those subject that attracts trolls by the hundred and they all have passionately held beliefs of what comprises good art.
It’s difficult to keep those passionate types from bringing everything down to a barroom brawl. All that stopped once we made Cennini Forum a subscription forum. For seven bucks a month the members can communicate freely and avail themselves of mountains of research material.
As passionately held as their beliefs may me, trolls won’t pay to let loose with their invective. The paid subscription maintains free and open communication between those who can benefit from an open forum yet acts a an effective blocks against those who wish us no good.
We also maintain a single section that is publicly available. There we publish threads of interest that may be a month or more old. Anyone can access it but to comment, you must register and the posts are moderated. What has been interesting is even with free access (but registration) the trolls do not fire any comments into the public section.
Perhaps these findings will be of use to those who are plagued with people trying to upset the website.
At the Studio Products site, we have the Cennini Forum devoted to providing clear information about the technical aspects of Art (mostly oil painting). Art is one of those subjects that attracts trolls by the hundred and they all seem to have passionately held beliefs of what comprises good art…and what is bad art.
It’s difficult to keep those passionate types from bringing everything down to a brawl. All that bad behavior stopped once we made Cennini Forum a subscription forum. For seven bucks a month the members can communicate freely and avail themselves of mountains of research material.
As passionately held as their beliefs may be to them, trolls won’t pay to express those important beliefs. The paid subscription maintains free and open communication between those who can benefit from an open forum yet acts as an effective blocks against those who wish us no good.
We also maintain a single section that is publicly available. There we publish threads of interest that may be a month or more old. Anyone can access it but to comment you must register, and the posts are moderated. What has been interesting is even with free access (but with registration) the trolls do not fire any comments into the public section.
Perhaps these findings will be of use to those who are plagued with people trying to upset the website.
What I do for my various blogs is firstly develop the content for the Post. If it is an FYI for example, I do not have comments turned on. If there are posts with no comments after 2 weeks, then I remove the comment option.
I agree that a blog without comments is just editorial. Additionally Social Networking takes time, and it is a well known suggestion that one should not enter Social Networking without the appropriate level of time committment. So part of that is moderating comments and engaging the readers through author comments.
Between the two above, the blog looks cleaner and loads faster.
Sometimes it seems the comments are ill thought, abusive, spam, and generally not constructive whatsoever. I think it is going to require more thought… Some blog articles are just that articles, and really not meant to be commented on, but to be absorbed, then disposed of, or learned from…
Great publicity stunt if you ask me. I hadn’t been to Engadget for a while. Went to see what all the hub-bub was about. I found some interesting articles and you can comment if you’re registered and logged in. So now they have returning readers and new readers. Brilliant!
I love getting comments on my blog and agree with the article that by not allowing comments you are in effect saying that the subject is closed. My blog is an extension of our website where I can go into more detail. Most comments really help and I enjoy reading them.
Endgadget has enough of a following that it might not make a difference but not sure they are making the right move.
I’m glad you support commenting because this feature allows readers to have their views known about the subject and enables the author to get feedback. There are now automated ways to block spam and monitor comments, so there must be another reason why big websites have closed commenting. Perhaps they have become too big to fail, so they don’t need us.
One site that’s dealt with comment moderation very well is slashdot.org. They have thousands of comments daily and have worked out a great system for dealing with them. Comments are moderated by registered users who earn moderating privilege; they have thousands of folks who are empowered to rate comments and the display of comments is then controlled by the consensus rating from the various moderator members.
Whether or not to allow commenting on your blog and/or news site comes down to two questions:
a) What is the goal of your blog?
b) Who is your audience?
a) Is the most important. If the goal of your blog is to publish news; having comments may not be necessary. Especially on a large site like Endgadget, I’d much rather have them spending their resources producing content vs. moderating spam. If the goal of your blog is to build community then it’s absolutely imperative to have comments on your blog. And, not only have comments but also interact with those people that comment.
I think that Blog comment are a necessary to communicate with your readers.
If I wanted what I write to be “this is the final word on this topic” I would write a book. Comments on blogs allow the reader to give their opinion, share information and questions. Responses to blogs are often the inspiration for blogs that go deeper into a topic.
Comments are those wonderful sign posts along the blogway that tell me people are reading what I write. Good bad or indifferent they are a great indicator for the blogger to use as a means to direct and facilitate the conversation. Which in my opinion is what it’s all about. Engaging in a dialogue although messy at times is infinately more interesting and rewarding than a monologue…in my case comments often spark new ideas that I want to explore and write about. Don’t know anything about Engadget…but I suspect that sooner rather than later they will run out of engaging monologues…possibly along with their audience.
Good points. I’d say if done properly they can generate some traffic and boost SEO, but it might be a little overrated.
People can’t handle comments and at some point they need to be removed. Just look at Youtube and all the nasty immature comments left on videos because people don’t do constructive critiques. They are not legitimate comments which has nothing to do with fee speech. I recently got a comment that was negative and very ignorant.Because they just wanted to be nasty. Is that a reason to keep comments on. It makes the blog or site look trashy to me.
I think comments are very helpful to analyse the viewers mindset if it is used in a proper manner
I love getting comments on my blog, it helps fuel discussion and allows readers to feel like they can become involved in the conversation http://www.axispropertyinvestment.com
Comments are the best way other readers have of keeping the author ‘honest’. In the sense that, without a closed feedback loop, the amazing knowledge needles in that big Internet haystack do not have any where to aggregate. Maybe I’m just skeptical minded, but I love the ‘reality check’ that reading other comments provides at the end of an article.
A blog without comments is indeed setting itself up as ‘the last word’, and cutting itself off from feedback other than its own. I think most of us can imagine where that leads when the only people you talk to agree with you.
Nice Topic,
I agree with u blogs should have comments on as blogs is presenting a view of the person and after getting comments from others, he can get a better version of the view he has presented.
Providing they are comments that are relevant and not rubbish then i think it is a good idea if it keeps people on your site.
I hope blog comments are worth it. That’s why I am here and I also like to see what others think on my blogs as well. Best – Steve
Great recourses.
is normal and i love reading comments.
Comments should never be turned off otherwise you will never get the reaction of your readers. It’s one way of interacting with your readers so why remove it.
Blogging is good but what’s gonna be the next big thing.Im surprised that tweeting is as big as it is.People seem to tweet about any old rubbish.
Shridhan Automation is a Manufactures, Exporters & Suppliers a wide variety of Level switches, Level switches for liquids and Level Transmitters for liquids in India.
Whether comments are open or not really depends on the form of the blog. A ‘traditional review’ is a definitive judgement, and as such is not a genre particularly susceptible to community collectives. Reading a review, the reader (at least most of the time), has limited or no experience with the product. That said prehaps 19th century styled reviews need to be updated for the 21st century conversational blog style?
I belive they are, its all about contribution to the community and without opinion there won’t be a community.
where would the internet be without comments
In most cases, the comments add insite and flare to the topic being discussed. Since most people are followers, their opinion of the topic will be more driven by the comments then the author.
yeah really I to like to comments on blog and blogging is my first hobby.
Luminous outsourcing
Completely agree. It’s a great way to generate traffic regardless.
n my view, there’s an interesting cultural difference between a blog that allows comments and one that does not. A blog that doesn’t allow comments seems to me to be saying “this is the final word on this topic.” To me it seems there’s something formal about such publications — they distance themselves from users; they hold themselves up as a paragon rather than engaging “on the level” with users.
there is a “cost” in keeping it open. But most systems allow for blog comments from invited commenters, so perhaps there is a middle ground that serves everyone’s needs.
Yes they do worth a lot, I have been lucky enough to have reached the target I had set through blog commenting for one of my sites, I highly recommend blog commenting.
im sure everyone would agree that blog comments are worth it.but you must invest some time in finding good candidates.
blogs that have high page rank and small number of comments so you get better link juice.
There’s this super-specific blogging community that you only understand if you’re knee-deep in the trenches. So maybe my friends don’t 100% get why I dig comments, but anyone else with a blog understands how vital they are to not only your site’s survival, but to your sanity/ego/motivation to move forward with your life.
We judge a blog entirely on its comments. I could give less of a sh*t if you get millions of readers every month, but if you’re getting 100 comments per post you are the cat’s pajamas. If you’re in PR you understand that reaching out to bloggers is important. But which bloggers do you contact? Those who are part of something bigger? The columnists for AOL? The biggies on HuffPo? Or do you go to the ones who have established their own little “cult followings”? People like The Bloggess or Marie Forleo…
To be perfectly honest, the reason I comment on blogs isn’t because people ask. From my experience, both with my own comments and seeing why other people write, here are the top reasons I comment a blog post:
I think it’s better when the text field appears on top of the form. That way, ideas are easy to write because you don’t miss anything while you fill the Name and E-mail fields
i am sorry becoes the mail order is not provid by me
Its very true, commenting on the blog, shows your participation, in this arena of information sharing.
what a wonderfull comments and information on this blog. really thank you so much for your nice posts.
your users don’t need their own site
Writing a blog is to be seen.If you don’t wanna to be seen,you wrote a blog to website?You may write your books,aren’t you?
Thanks for useful information.
I think it depends of blogers. Certain like to share ideas and discussions with the readers, some others don’t so..
Just this morning I asked myself “are blog comments worth it?” I went to google and searched for “blog comments” hoping to start with a broad search and narrow it down. The very 1st search result on Google was for WWD .. so I’m here. I read the article .. and I continued to read all of the post comments. I think the comments actually made me appreciate the article even more. The comments added a perspective from a wide audience. The comments here give validity to the question and made the original post by WWD transform itself from one authors view to a post worthy of bookmarking for future pondering! Good job WWD -Thanks
The worst thing about comments is well known, this is spam. But aside from it, most of the time, comments are useless, unless you have some forum feeling on your post. Forums get more in-topic answers, and i think it’s not because you need to register. You can also post very, very, very valuable content but it’s hard (thank you captain obvious).
Sometimes short comments are useful if they give pieces of information about something on your site, something about you… It’s a game of finding gold needles among rust needles in a haystack.
Keep the discussions flowing and that would be the best course of action to keep the community involved!
[...] the pros and cons of letting users post comments on your blog. Read the full article here: http://webworkerdaily.com/2010/02/04/are-blog-comments-worth-it/ –Social [...]
[...] Worker Daily has a post where they ask “Are Blog Comments Worth It?” I often ask the same question, particularly with the comments I get on my Business [...]
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[...] groups of people. In a post titled, “Are Blog Comments Worth It?” by Georgina Laidlaw at @ http://webworkerdaily.com/2010/02/04/are-blog-comments-worth-it/, Laidlaw states, “After all, one of the benefits of blog comments is that your users don’t need [...]
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[...] on the content. Leo Babauta and Seth Godin are just two examples. It’s a touchy subject with clear proponents on both sides of the debate, but managing comments and comment spam can be a real time drain. A word of caution before making [...]