Addressing those who comment: The wrong ways

As promised, this is the follow up to a previous article ““. While it may be fairly obvious to most of you how to talk to people who comment on your blog, it might not be to others. This post is kind of targeted at newer bloggers. But you should still read it no matter how good of a blogger you are, you may learn something new.

To summarize what we covered last time, we found out that to address those who comment your blog the right way would be to respond to their comments, address them by their names, and ask questions. Those are just some of the tips I shared with you that I believe are the qualities of good discussion through comments.

1. Getting the obvious out of the way: A bad way to talk to your commentators is by not even responding to them

Who saw that coming? But it’s something I can’t leave out as it’s the most important thing I want to drill into your head. Talk to everyone. They were great enough to come to your blog and comment on it, so just reply to what they had to say. It doesn’t have to be a paragraph long reply, just a few sentences that show you actually care. It is possible that your comment won’t be replied to (or even seen) by that one person, but it makes you look pretty friendly to others.

What’s worse than not responding to anyone at all?
Yes, there is something worse than not replying to your commentators. It may be just me, but I think it’s worse to reply to a only a few people than it is none at all. I know you may think it sounds crazy, but think of it from my point of view:

I commented on a blog a few nights ago. I wrote a  fairly decent comment, was curious to see what they publisher had to say. The blog publisher goes over comments and (hopefully) reads them all and instead of replying to everyone, they only comment to a few people. The person before me and after me got replied to, but I didn’t. Now, I felt a little annoyed but I didn’t do anything about it. It shows that the person who runs the blog is either lazy, or just doesn’t care much about the community that they would not include someone who had a valid opinion.

So if you look at it from that perspective, do you think I would ever comment on that blog again? Apparently my opinion wasn’t valid to that blogger so there was no use in even replying to me. How would you feel if that had happened to you?

An easy way to reply to every comment…

If you have your comment system set up like I do, you will have to manually approve comments from new people before they go live to your blog. As you approve the comment to go live onto your blog, if you look over to the right a little bit you will see a link that says “Reply” (WordPress 2.7)

Simply click that link and you will be able to write a reply to that comment without even leaving your admin panel. This will save you a bunch of scrolling, and is very easy to use.
replying to their comments trying to sell a product

2. You flood your commentators with affiliate links

Making money is great and all, but you have to be careful how you do it. If you are engaging someone in a conversation, don’t try to sell them a product. There is a good chance that they will lose respect of you because you are just proving that you’d rather make some money instead of a new friend. Why should you feel the need to put those affiliate links in your comments when you can probably just throw them in a few times in your posts?

EXCEPTION: Yes, there is an exception to this. If someone asks for a recommendation on a product that will help them, then feel free to throw an affiliate link at them (provided that link will be useful to them and they ask for it). It’s like a “help me, help you” situation.

3. Going moderation crazy

You can over moderate. Having control is fun, and I have seen it on countless forums and even blogs. People who can’t handle the power abuse it. How can it be abused?

• Deleting non-spam comments (all comments that aren’t spam should be published)
• Editing out comments that don’t need to be edited (exception: foul language, error/grammar mistakes)
• Telling people to get back on topic. Don’t be harsh about this. Some people tend to stray from the original topic (at least I know I do sometimes). Let them say whatever, reply to it and just ease them back on track. It’s not a big deal when things get off topic, but if it gets really bad then let them know they’re going off topic in a calm, but authoritative manner.
• Not approving comments that disagree with you. Approve EVERY non spam comment. Even if they disagree with you. Opinions are so strong, and they can create so much buzz. It sucks when everyone agrees with you. Encourage people to share their thoughts – even the negative ones. You can definitely learn something from someone elses point of view.

There are plenty of blogs that totally abuse their moderation powers. It’s lame because it really prevents some people from getting their opinion heard. Don’t be like that, encourage all point of views and embrace them. It makes a hell of a discussion, and you might learn something new.

4. You don’t use nested comments!

Trust me on this, you need to have nested comments on your blog. Don’t know what nested comments are? Just check out the comments on any recent posts here at Blogussion. You will see a comment with a box inside of it with a reply – that is what nested comments look like. They are great because it makes your comments organized, and it is easier to reply to people and start a conversation between a group of people.

If you don’t use nested comments, look into it immediately. If you use WordPress 2.7, you already have all you need built in. You may just need to edit your comments.php file to make it work if you upgraded from an older version of WordPress. The good news is that a lot of free/premium now work with WordPress 2.7 so you won’t have to worry about editing any files to make nested comments work. If you don’t have a theme compatible with the new nested comments features, check out Otto’s post on how to make your comments nested in WordPress 2.7.

Concluding Thoughts

So if you have not read our first part of this mini series, check out and let us know what you have learned in the comments sections below. Keep in mind that no comment is a stupid (except for you spam bots out there) and everything will be read and replied to.