If you were asked what makes a blog a lot different from the conventional web site, what would your answer be? Off the top of my head, I would probably say something about the opportunity for interaction between blog (business) owner and the reader. Indeed, comments make blogs a whole lot more interesting and real as compared to static web sites.
Keeping this idea in mind, ask yourself how you are making use of commenting to your advantage. Has this concept even crossed your mind? Or maybe you have not really paid that much attention to it. In this post and the next few ones, let us take a deeper look at how you can make the most out of comments in your blog.
The first step to consider would be how you allow commenting. Having readers be able to leave comments is a great thing but this does not mean that you have no control as to the who and what. As you might probably know, spamming is rife online – even when it comes to comments. As such, you might want to employ specific measures as to who can comment and the content of the comment as well.
Just a note, though, balance is the key here. On the one end, you can allow everyone and anyone to comment without moderation. On the other end, you can require readers to sign up and then log in every time they want to leave a comment. In my mind, these two extremes may not be the best solutions. It would be better to take a moderate stance and make it easy for real readers to leave comments but make sure that automated software cannot leave comments.
Originally posted on May 14, 2008 @ 11:53 am
