Blogs: Marketing Through Relationship Building - Comments as an integral part of all good blogs
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To create a two way and even multi-person conversation, the blog must have the blog comment system activated. The comments let the readers interact with the writer. As a conversation builder, comments are difficult to beat.
Many business people hesitate to use the blog comment feature for two reasons. The first is a fear of negative feedback on their products and services in general, or on the day’s blog posting in particular. Instead of understanding that open dialogue provides priceless market research and intelligence about the business, the reluctant blogger views the remarks as the problem.
As a result, exactly the wrong response is taken to often legitimate concerns about the company. The comments are disabled or deleted. Instead of building a sense of open discussion and honest assessment of the business, the cover up approach is used. Blogs are about honesty, and the readers will discover the problem almost immediately. Instead of developing good customer relations, exactly the opposite situation results.
The other reason for disabling comments is fear of the well known and heavily publicized blog comment spam.
First of all, a blog is a conversation between the blog writer and the reader. Part of that personal interaction is through the ability of readers to post thoughts and comments on the posting in question. Many times, the number of post comments will total in the dozens. Literally.
That sort of real and friendly communication between blogger and reader, and often among the comment posters themselves, is part of the true power of blogs. Many times, reading the comments is much more interesting than the initial post that spawned the discussion in the first place.
Remove the blog comment portion of the posts, and the life of the blog becomes a hollow shell, a mere shadow of its former self.
Blog comments will still receive spam. Some blogs do receive more than others, and for many bloggers, spam is a major problem. You would think those heavily spam assaulted bloggers would cut off their comments. Right?
Wrong.
Next: Some things bloggers do to reduce comment spam >>
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