Commenting: Friend or Foe?

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Commenting: Friend or Foe? This is the million dollar question that we will be looking at today. Please understand this before we go any further, the information provided in this post pertains to blogging for business. Even though it MIGHT hold value to regular bloggers, my thought process is based business oriented blogs. With that out of the way, let’s move forward.

Commenting, or in some cases, the lack of commenting can have an effect on your business. The first and foremost thing that a blogger attempts is to connect with their audience. When someone takes the time to write a worthwhile comment on your post, it opens the door for dialogue. Typically, this is where most bloggers lose it. After oftentimes spending hours writing the best article they can, their efforts are rewarded with 1, 5, or maybe 10 comments; yet, they do not respond to any of them. So I ask the question again, Commenting: Friend or Foe?

Foe If you answered FOE, you are correct. Rich Dansereau wrote an article entitled Showing The Love; Commentors To Clients that talks about converting your commentors to clients. The problem is that you cannot convert a commentor that you do not engage in dialogue, and you cannot engage someone in dialogue if you ignore them. I could go on and on with this, but I think we all get the point of missed opportunity when comments are ignored. So, lets look at how to make the most of this opportunity.

The first step to making a commentor a FRIEND is to respond to them. Now, frankly, the comments that say “Nice Article” or “Great Job” might get a canned response of “Thanks” or it may never find its way onto the comment section. Friend However, a truly thought out comment is going to get my attention. I will take my time in answering the comment. I might actually send the commenter an email. I might even visit their site. I might very well take it to the next level and comment on one of their articles. Now I have totally engaged them and I would expect to see them come back to comment again in the future. Maybe they are not a client today or tomorrow, however, they know that I will pay attention when they are ready to do business. But, one of the biggest payoffs is the fact that they might very well send me a referral, and for that, I am truly grateful. Just think what I would have lost had I not engaged them through their comment.

Comments are not friend or foe as much as we are the friend or foe of commenting. Most sites like our real estate network encourage readers to comment by adding tools that help the commenter get links. Tools like CommentLuv, Gravatar, and Top Commentors are great because they provide additional links for the commentor. With that said, WE as bloggers still have to do our part by responding to the comments that are put to us. If we don’t, how can we expect to retain our readers and make the comment section of our blog our friend rather than our foe?

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9 responses to “Commenting: Friend or Foe?”

McLaughlin richardmclaughlin.biz says:

August 28, 2009 at 11:44 am

Google loves fresh content, and comments are seen as fresh content. If you have four comments in a day that only say “Good post” your blog post has been refreshed in Googlebot 4 times.
Mihaela Lica pamil-visions.net says:

August 28, 2009 at 11:57 am

Interesting thought, McLaughlin, so you are insinuating that we should approve any type of crappy comment just to get the attention of the Googlebot? I used to believe that comments were part of a conversation and they were made independent of Google.

As far as “great article” and “Thanks” go – these are just spam comments, made to “enter” a blog and drop a link. They have no value and your best bet is to delete them, Rich.
hospitalera hospitalera.com says:

August 28, 2009 at 12:07 pm

I agree, acknowledging and answering blog comments are basic blogger skills in my opinion, SY
Rich Dansereau says:

August 28, 2009 at 12:52 pm

@ McLaughlin – While I appreciate and welcome well thought out comments (like your in response to this post), I cannot abide the approval of generic comments like ‘great article’ for the sake of new content. I am capable of adding fresh quality content that readers will hopefully find of value.

@ Mihaela Lica – I completely agree. Rarely do those generic ‘spam’ comments make it onto my blog for the very reason you cite. BTW, this post was actually written by this networks’ other co-owner/administrator, Danny Thornton so I need to make sure he gets the credit.

@ Sy – Agreed. Thanks for joining in the discussion.
Danny Thornton positiverealestateprofessionals.com says:

August 28, 2009 at 1:22 pm

Guys and Gals, I have to agree with Rich in the fact that we keep out the crap and look for comments that add value to the article itself. I feel like if I took an hour or two to write out a thought provoking article, why mess it up with “great Article” comments. To me it just seems like you skimmed it or did not read it at all.
Bob weirdworldwebnews.blogspot.com says:

August 28, 2009 at 11:15 pm

You said very correctly. Unless you respond to the readers’ comments, there is no dialogue. Thanks for sharing.
Danny Thornton positiverealestateprofessionals.com says:

August 29, 2009 at 8:40 am

Bob, isn’t that what we blog for? Don’t we bloggers want dialogue or are we off writing our next masterpiece and already forgotten about the one we just wrote.
zerrin giverecipe.com says:

August 29, 2009 at 5:45 pm

I completely agree. You pointed out a very significant side of blogging. When this is written in an article, you understand its importance better. Thank you Rich for reminding us that blogging is another form of dialogue.
Rich Dansereau says:

August 29, 2009 at 10:14 pm

@ Zerrin – I really appreciate creating a dialogue with my readers and find that the comment section is one place that this can be easily done. Thanks for reading and commenting! BTW, this post was actually written by this networks’ other co-owner/administrator, Danny Thornton so I need to make sure he gets the credit.