Positive Real Estate Professionals

The growth and widespread use of the internet is undeniable. According to Internet World Stats, which complies statistics from Nielson Online, International Telecommucations Union, and GfK local regulators, that as of March 31, 2009 there are an estimated 1,596,270,108 people who use the internet. This figure represents 23.8% of the world’s population. Though much of the world is not yet connected, this is a significant figure. This large pool of internet users means that your message, if optimized, has the potential to reach an enormous audience. This reach also means that the delivery of your message and optimizing of your site should encourage some common internet etiquette. In this post I want to examine commenting and ways to optimize your readers positive experience on your site.

To begin with we must recognize that all but the most basic of websites will allow for a conversation between the site’s owner / administrator and the site’s visitors. This conversation can be facilitated in many different ways. Some sites have forms that visitors can fill out for any number of reasons; maybe a visitor wants more information on something they have seen or read on the site and the form is the way to open that line of communication. Many sites allow commenting on everything from a product or service to information presented in an article or blog format. The main point is that a good site will attempt to engage a visitor in conversation.

Many visitors often do not engage in conversation for a number of reasons. I believe that the most obvious and common reason visitors ’silently’ visit a site is because they feel they have nothing to contribute. This issue can be alleviated if there is a clear ‘call to action’ on the site itself. A ‘call to action’ is a simple phrasing tool that many sites utilize. Posing questions on a site can illicit a response from a visitor and make them feel they have something worth contributing. Doesn’t this seem like an easy way to get the conversation going?

Another reason that a visitor may leave a site without having been engaged is simply bad planning and layout in the design of the site. Think about what you look for when you are visiting a new site. First and foremost is the visual appearance. Is the site easy on the eyes? Next has got to be the ability of a visitor to navigate the site and find the information that brought them there in the first place. Everything from search boxes, menus, categories, tag clouds, etc. are used to help with the ease of visitor navigation. Many sites employ a combination of these and other tools to help visitors find what they are looking for. If a visitor can’t find what they are looking for, then the opportunity to engage them is lost, and why would they bother to return to the site?

Many sites and networks provide for an easy way for visitors to become engaged; the comment section. I have seen comment sections on everything from new products on a business site to ‘the wall’ on Facebook. Now just because there is an easily accessible comment section, does this mean visitors will necessarily leave a comment? Many site visitors they are looking for some payoff. That payoff can be in the form of a site owner / administrator who actually acknowledges their visitors by responding to their comments. The payoff can be in the form of a link love system that allows a commentor to enter not only their name and email address but also their site’s URL which then places a backlink to the commentor’s site. Facebook, for example uses a form of backlinking by linking back to your Facebook page when you write on someone’s wall. Other sites employ a high profile ‘Top Commentors’ section which encourages visitors to comment because they want to be highlighted and linked to in this high profile way. These are just a few of the ways to encourage the conversation on your site.

One of the things that you do not want to do is encourage your site’s visitors to engage in poor etiquette in your comment section. One of the most blatant and frequently used forms of poor etiquette is comment spam. Comment spam takes on many forms, all of which are generally frowned upon by a site owner / administrator. One of the most egregious forms of comment spam is not even acknowledging the specific issue or product in the post but blatantly advertising some completely unrelated product, service, post, or site. Another common form of comment spam occurs when a visitor actually responds to the content of the post but inserts a link to their site. This form of manual backlinking is actually a big faux pas and is not a form of comment love. By the way, hiding your link behind an image is still spam. Many site owners / administrators do not mind relevant links in comments but is self promotion really relevant?

Just because a site owner / administrator is not set up for some type of backlinking from comments does not mean that it is acceptable to create your own backlinking on their site. Many systems allow a site owner / administrator to edit comments prior to their publication. What this means is that comment spam can easily be deleted prior to it ever making it onto the site. Some systems do not allow for this comment editing which leaves basically two options for the site owner / administrator, allow the comment as it is or simply do not approve the comment at all. I would highly encourage any site owner / administrator to add a comment love system to their site to encourage conversation with visitors and discourage bad internet etiquette.