Blogging Tips: Should You Moderate Blog Comments?

Online Marketing

Imagine yourself as a reader of a business blog, you have read a company’s view point and want to express your opinion. You type your comments and hit the ‘submit’ button and get to see the below options:

  • ‘We appreciate your feedback, you comment is pending moderation’.
  • ‘Thank you for leaving a comment; you should be able to see it as soon as it is approved’.
  • ‘Oops! You need to register yourself on this site, follow the link to take you through our registration processes’.

It puts you off, right?

Why do most blog posts moderate comments?

The real reason for moderating comments is to halt any spam posts and get the voice of a ‘real’ interested individual. Moderating should never be done to censor comments.

Do you feel that you are hurting the voice of people through your moderation strategy?

The issue with moderation:

  • Would you spread the word about a site that tells you your comment is under moderation? Would you immediately share that? The answer probably is a ‘NO’ because this one liner immediately alienates you. You don’t want to spread a word about a site that does not engage you.
  • Even if your comment is approved some time later, it is a high probability that you would not get the ‘approve notification’. This might prevent you from revisiting the site or spreading a word about it.
  • The blog owner might find your comment a really interesting one, but has the time to view it only three days after you posted the comment. This kills the conversation, naturally!
  • You have scrolled through all the comments in a particular blog post and decided that you will comment once and also engage with another person who posted a comment earlier to agree/ disagree with his viewpoint. You now see that your comment is pending moderation. Chances are that you will now hesitate to engage with that other person as well!
  • Since you have got the notification on ‘pending approval’, you sometimes start feeling that the moderator is only allowing positive comments.

blogging tipsSmall business blogs offer great opportunities for businesses, but do have their own risks and limitations.

Your ability to initiate online conversations in a manner that your readers and customers are able to comment on your posts, and you are able to respond to them quickly is a key to running a successful small business.

In order to evolve as a truly engaging business that cares about customer sentiment, you would want to allow the voice of your customer to be heard. So, if they want to leave a comment, they should be allowed to leave that comment.

Blogging Tips:  Why would you want to moderate?

  • Possibility of spam
  • Possibility of incongruous behaviour including personal, sexist, racist and violent threats/ comments

What can you do?

  • Establish clear policies for acceptable behaviour: You should manage online conversations and interactions by establishing transparent guidelines for moderating content, these should have clear definitions of what your site would term as acceptable behaviour and what would be termed as non-acceptable or inappropriate behaviour.
  • You could provide your viewers access to a policy manual: Ensure that the link to the policy document is provided on your website, your blog page and on the comments section. This manual could form the basis for flagging any unacceptable content and your viewers should be able to refer to this, if required.
  • Do not focus on positives only: Sometimes, negative comments provide great insights. As a small business owner, you would want to hear all good stuff about your post. An important point for consideration here is not ignoring genuine feedback. Your audience wants to feel engaged and valued. If you respond to them apologizing for the ‘not so good service’ that they received and propose actions to not let it happen again, you have probably won back your lost customer! Your customer values the fact that you care! He feels a part of your business!
  • Eliminate spam through ‘CAPTCHA’: The ‘CAPTCHA’ tool requires your audience to type in a code word prior to posting comments. This helps eradicate spam.
  • The Askimet plugin: Installing the Askimet plugin can help you filter out spam quickly and it is free for personal use!
  • Deploy a comment management system: Disqus is a comment management system that not only allows threaded comments but also sends an e-mail to the commentator that his comment has been responded to. This helps in solidifying the engagement.

Your blog will always remain your blog; let people comment on what you feel! Allow their voices to be heard!

Sometimes, you would need to disconnect your feelings and connect with your bloggers feelings. Allow the conversation to flow!

Let your blog become a true, engaging dialogue – instrumental in creating a community!

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