Should You Turn Off Blog Comments?

October 18, 2008


I used to believe blog comments were essential to the survival of a blog. But now I’m considering turning off mine altogether. Don’t get me wrong, comments can be useful - particularly for networking with other bloggers, or to get feedback from customers of your business.

But comments from assholes who are just looking for an argument, to attract traffic to their own blog, don’t serve a purpose at all. I get a good amount of traffic to this blog, because I’ve put in a lot of hard work. And while most of my blog commenters are friendly, wonderful people, this isn’t some traffic charity for a few not so wonderful readers who are too lazy to do the same.

Blog Comments Can Sometimes Harm Your Business

Naomi of Itty Biz recently disabled comments on her blog and apparently this annoyed some of her commenters. But as she explained - her blog is there to advise readers, not for folk to discuss whether they agree with what she has to say.

And I can see exactly where she’s coming from. After all, she’s offering a professional service on her blog. Only a fraction of her readers are commenters. She doesn’t want potential customers seeing conflicting and misleading advice from commenters. Who would?

To me, it’s kind of like having an open day event in your office, to attract new customers, then a competitor bursts in halfway through and says, “I disagree - she’s wrong. Why don’t you all come over to to my office, because I know what I’m talking about.”

You just wouldn’t do that would you? So why do some folk think it’s ok to do it on other people’s blogs?

I don’t offer a service on here. But I’m not a charity - I can’t afford to offer my expertise free of charge forever. So I certainly don’t want my blog to be turned into some customer grabbing festival for the types who only turn up when they want to say, “You’re wrong”, “Or I disagree”.

This weekend, I made the decision to ban one of these types of commenters, as opposed to switching comments off on my blog but I’m going to see how it goes.


Does Blog Commenting Waste Too Much Time?

Do you get tired of blog comments? Do you find it too time consuming to read heaps of blogs and make comments? After all, the process of clicking through to a blog you’ve read and commenting is time consuming.

I enjoy the networking aspect of commenting. But I must admit, it’s become too time consuming to read other blogs every day and I certainly don’t comment on everything I read.

Also, I find that when I have too many comments on a thread on this blog, it seems to take forever to reply to them all. Of course, I could just say something like “thanks to everyone for commenting” but that would be almost as bad as saying nothing.

Who Are We Writing For Anyway?

Naomi also mentioned that aside from time wasted, having comments on her blog impacts the way she writes. This is because many bloggers feel that blogging should be about discussion, not a lecture

And I can relate to what she says. I try to write posts that will attract different types of reader. And the posts which attract most folk finding me through the search engines, or social networking don’t often appeal to commenters at all.

Liz Strauss is brilliant at writing posts which provide a solution to readers problems and encourage discussion at the same time. But I must admit, I struggle with it. I did find Liz’s book, How To Write A Successful And Outstanding Blog was a brilliant help. And I would recommend it to anyone who wants to learn about conversational blogging. But I still have a long way to go before I master this art.

Recently, one of my readers emailed me to say my articles were beginning to look like I was asking my readers for advice, instead of giving them advice. And that is definitely not a good impression to give.

Are Some Types Of Comments Even Worth Having?

The Traffic Needy

It’s not just the argumentative types who are looking for traffic. Many new bloggers almost always comment on other people’s blogs to attract traffic to their own. And this is fair enough, so long as their comments are useful and not just something like “great post”. New blogs need all the traffic they can get - sometimes their commenters are their only source of traffic.

But often, these types of commenters, don’t bother to read the post and leave some neutral comment. And I don’t feel that these type of comments are particularly useful to a blog. I would much rather spend my time marketing, or writing new posts, than responding to them.

You Comment On My Blog And I’ll Comment On Yours

I’ve heard some new bloggers say that they’ll only read and comment on blogs, if the blogger comments on theirs. And I have to wonder how useful this is. If someone is only reading your blog, because you comment on theirs, are they really a potential customer?

When I first began blogging, I would read and comment on some of the busier blogs, but I didn’t expect them to do the same for me. After all, it would be physically impossible for them to keep up, as they get so many comments.

By leaving an intelligent comment, on a topic I found interesting to read, I was rewarded by several of that blog’s readers visiting my own blog. But if they had commented on my blog back then, they wouldn’t have got such a great reward, as their comment would have been seen by few people.

Does This Mean I Think Blog Comments Are A Waste Of Time?

No - it doesn’t. I do think blog comments can be a useful networking tool and a great way to communicate with potential customers. But I don’t think a comments section is an invitation to tell a blogger their advice is wrong - especially when they’re using their blog to market their business. And I don’t see the point in commenting on a blog, when you haven’t even read the original article.

This post is closed to comments, as I feel it will attract the wrong type of comments, as opposed to genuine readers.

I’m not closing comments on this blog permanently but I reserve the right to ban folk who aren’t welcome here.

Related Reading

How To Attract Amazingly Positive People
Blogging Without A Business 2 - The Fringe Benefits
Blog Marketing: Do You Make These Commenting Cock Ups
My Blogging Mistakes: Were Yours This Bad?

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Posted by cathlawson | Filed Under Running a Business 

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2 Responses to “Should You Turn Off Blog Comments?”

  1. Blog Comments | on October 22nd, 2008 2:27 am

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