One of the biggest issues in the corporate blogging world is whether or not you should allow readers to comment on your blog posts. There are two main schools of thought to the issue, basically yes and no. However, we believe that it is important to allow your readers to interact with you, and comments are one of the best ways to do this. You just need to make sure that you are handling the issue correctly for the best results.

First, you should make your decision about comments at the beginning of your blog and then stick with them. Don’t flip flop, allowing comments and then changing your mind. It will give a bad impression of your company and make it seem as though you are trying to hide something from the public. That’s not the image you want to project.

Next, you should think about allowing some not so flattering comments on your blog. No one likes controversy, but the fact of the matter remains that it can increase your page views. Don’t be afraid to allow some bad comments on your blog, just as long as you can answer the issue calmly and appropriately. Obviously, if a comment is just vitriolic and damaging, you should not approve it, but sometimes, bad comments and your response can lead to greater reader loyalty and they will want to back you up.

We’ve mentioned approving comments because we believe the best of both worlds in blogging is to allow comments, but on a moderated basis. This means that all of the comments will go into a queue where you can read and approve them. This is much safer and helps cut down on comment spam as well as people who are just looking to start trouble. It takes a little bit longer, but you will be able to have a lot more peace of mind.

Next, you’ll want to set some ground rules for your comments and make sure that you enforce them fairly. For example, you can state that no profanity or hate speech is allowed, and that some posts may not be approved based on their overall content. If people know this going in, you can cut down on the amount of people that are screaming censorship.

You’ll never be able to please all of the people all of the time, but allowing comments on your blog can be very good for your company. In fact, sometimes the blog comments can be more interesting than the blog itself in some cases. You’ll also be able to increase your page views as your readers keep coming back throughout the day to follow the comment thread.

Used wisely, comments are very powerful and can be beneficial to your business. You may want to hire a blog management company to help you with this process so that you can free up your time to actually work for your company instead of having to babysit your blog.

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Originally posted 2008-06-18 05:08:36. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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