Blog Comment Tips

Realtors say that real estate is a "relationship business". Most businesses are relationship businesses and often it's not what you know, but who you know that has more impact on your success. The internet was always a good place to find information but now it's becoming a great place to find people -- and blog comments are a big part of that.

Your readers' comments and the friendships you make with them are one of the most tangible rewards for the hard work you will put into your blog. The importance of comments is this: the community they create is what separates blogs from other websites.

Comments = content

Original, fresh, provocative content is the king of the internet. Comments posted by your readers can be your blog's most compelling content. What's more, they're free. The number of comments that each post receives is a measure of that article's "interestingness". A high comment count is often a hint to your readers that your post addresses a hot topic. I was reading the February issue of Dwell magazine last night (highly recommended) and realized that blog comments are the online incarnation of the letters to the editor -- when next you read a magazine, take note of the importance given to those letters-- and which articles received them.

Example: On the local Seattle real estate blog, Rain City Guide, the comments are often the main attraction. This recent post by Ardell Della Loggia, has 83 comments so far.

The value of customer feedback

Advice you receive from readers gives insight that would cost tens of thousands of dollars to replicate off-line. Your readers are your company's most passionate customers and critics. LISTEN to them -- it will take the guesswork (and much of the risk) out of your business plan.

Example: The team at 37Signals actively uses their blog to solicit user feedback from users of their online productivity software.

You don't know everything

I'd hate to be the one to break it to you, but you don't know everything. Your other motivation for attracting comments should be to learn from your audience. A blog is a great place to test your ideas out and to say to your readers; "hey, this is what I think, what do you think?" We recently polled real estate bloggers to find out if they benefit from blogging. All of the respondents mentioned how much they had learned as a result of the conversations on their blog. If you manage to avoid having all the answers, you will attract a more vibrant conversation.

Example: NYC venture capitalist, Fred Wilson, is a master of using his blog and its audience to fine-tune his investing ideas.

How to respond to comments

• Be honest and to the point.
• Respond quickly.
• Reply to every (rational) question.
• If a commenter corrects you, thank them and update your post.
  

It's that simple. More challenging, especially for a business blog, is deciding when not to respond to a comment. Do not take comments personally -- your readers are entitled to their opinions and you won't make any friends by beating up on them merely because they disagree with you.

Example: The Sellsius blog. No-one in the real estate blogosphere responds to comments with the immediacy or passion that these guys do. You can actually chat with them live on their blog!

Moderating comments

Your blogging platform will give you the ability to moderate your blog's comments. If you do everything right, you will still get SPAM comments. Delete the spam -- and if possible, block the spammers from commenting again. There are many automated ways to combat spam -- a captcha works particularly well and is my personal recommendation. The short cut to moderating spam is to require that your readers register and log in to your blog to comment but it is a deterrent to legitimate participation and I don't recommend it.

Worse than spammers, are trolls. Trolls are miserable people with nothing better to do than criticize your writing or bully your readers. The best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them and suggest your audience do the same -- they will eventually move on.

Silent comments

When is a comment not a comment? When it's a trackback, a digg, a 5-star-rating, a subscriber count, Meebo chat widget or a MyBlogLog avatar. Typed comments are just one way you can allow your audience to interact with your blog and with each other. As you read great blogs, take note of all the ways they demonstrate that other readers have been there before you. Even a page counter that tells you how many people have read a post can be a "silent comment" on the popularity of that post.

Example: The MyBlogLog Recent Readers widget on the right side of this page is a great example of this. Those photo's are pictures of our recent readers --  they may not have left a comment you can read but you know they've been here and can click through their images to read their blogs -- and the blogs that they are reading.

Commenting on other blogs

Don't forget to comment on other blogs. New bloggers should spend two weeks reading and commenting on other blogs before they even get started with their own. When you leave a comment, you will link to your blog -- and that in turn grows your audience comments. Blogging thrives on karma. If you join the conversation on multiple blogs, you may soon find that it becomes difficult to remember to return to posts you commented on. A solution to that problem is to use a service like cocomment to track your comments and notify you of replies (eg. my comments).