Do Blog Comments Provide Any Value?

[musicproducer]

I'm planning to launch a blog for personal promotion and selling my music related products once this semester is over. I'm considering whether to have comments or not. I'm leaning towards not. Here are a few of the pros and cons that I can see.

Pros

• Could make it easier to build a relationship with readers
• Blogs are "supposed" to have a comment function
• Might motivate me to write high quality content, in order to get positive comments rather than flames

Cons

• Spam
• Scary not to be in control of that part of the web site
• Moderation might take a lot of my time
• Often I judge the value of blogs I visit by the number of comments. Few or no comments means the blog is not very authoritative. Better then to have no comment function at all, to make people judge my blog based on what I write rather than what other people write.
• If people really really want to comment, trackbacks are better for me since it gives me a back link. A comment on my blog does not.

What do you think? Is there any other important pros/cons I've missed?

Do you have comments turned on or off on your blog?

[Devon Brown]

While I do understand your Cons.. here's something to think about. There are plenty of "widgets" available to deter comment spam, and you're always in control over your comments. You don't have to have it automatically approve, you can manually approve each comment.
I have comments on my blog and I don't spend that much time moderating. But I really really enjoy the interaction.

When I visit other people's blogs and have a question, kudo, or comment and their comments are turned off, it's kind of aggravating because I feel they don't want to listen to others.. they just want to make their own noise. I think it loses something if comments are off.

I understand comments being turned off for high volume sites or controversial ones, but others just stump me.
I think whatever you decide to do is the right choice for you.

[Istvan Horvath]

I think your fear of spam and the time for moderation are exaggerated.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool, there always have been and there are plugins that cut down the number of spam in need for manual moderation to 1-2 per week. At least, that's my experience.

Akismet is a built-in plugin, comes with the downloaded package, just need activation; another very effective tool to combat TB (trackback) spam is STBV (Simple Trackback Validation).

[ivana]

Not a spam if you don't just say, check out my blog people love to get posts on their blogs.

I do too, and value is there from a comment on your blog, and from a link back to your blog, from another blog.

[AnneE]

I like to ask readers for their thoughts or to encourage questions. It hope it gives the impression that I'm trying to have a meaningful information exchange rather than just blah, blah, keyword, blahing along

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by musicproducer

Do you have comments turned on or off on your blog?

IMO, having open comments is essential to a blog, especially if it's intended to be a flagship blog. I even have comments turn on for my niche blogs for SEO purposes although I moderate comments there much tighter.

Moderation isn't that big a chore as long as you run Akismet and other, non-intrusive, anti-spam plugins. I have somewhere around 100 blogs I maintain and it doesn't get out of hand for me. Remember, you are in control of the content of your site. You decide what appears and what doesn't. If you don't like a comment, either edit, delete it or mark it as spam. It's that easy.

[Travelloger]

The absolute best thing you can do is to have comments that are moderated before post shows up.

This way you will get high quality comments that contribute value. Make sure to dofollow the comments you approve (and check the sites people post for quality before allowing). This way your blog will have a lot of activity (people want link juice) and the comments that display will be of value to yourself and others.

[Peggy Baron]

Yes, do have comments. Use Akismet, as suggested, and you won't have to worry about spam. Moderating comments is not a big deal.

When I read a blog post and want to comment, I get really annoyed when they have comments turned off. I won't be back.

I think the pros far outweight the cons.

Peggy

[musicproducer]

Okay so pretty strong support for comments so far, which was to be expected. Can't see that anyone adressed my biggest con though (should've listed it first), namely 0 comments = not authoritative. My wish is to establish myself as an expert in my field and I want every aspect of my web site to convey that. I'd rather they spend their time on my site reading my other posts or looking at my portfolio than reading other peoples comments.

What about this - if I start out with comments turned off, nothing's stopping me from adding them in once I feel I have enough readers to support it. On the other hand, closing it down once it's up creates a somewhat delicate problem - what to do with the comments that are already there?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by musicproducer

Can't see that anyone adressed my biggest con though (should've listed it first), namely 0 comments = not authoritative. My wish is to establish myself as an expert in my field and I want every aspect of my web site to convey that. I'd rather they spend their time on my site reading my other posts or looking at my portfolio than reading other peoples comments.

I'll say that if that's your attitude you won't have a very successful blog.

[ivana]

Originally Posted by musicproducer

Okay so pretty strong support for comments so far, which was to be expected. Can't see that anyone adressed my biggest con though (should've listed it first), namely 0 comments = not authoritative. My wish is to establish myself as an expert in my field and I want every aspect of my web site to convey that. I'd rather they spend their time on my site reading my other posts or looking at my portfolio than reading other peoples comments.

What about this - if I start out with comments turned off, nothing's stopping me from adding them in once I feel I have enough readers to support it. On the other hand, closing it down once it's up creates a somewhat delicate problem - what to do with the comments that are already there?

I see you are new at this. A very good blog, the active blog, that can engage their readers, will get a lot of niche referals without huge efforts. You will also need to be friendly with your list, don't think just money, money, money, but really help those people!

I hope this helps...Ivana

[petevamp]

Originally Posted by musicproducer

I'm planning to launch a blog for personal promotion and selling my music related products once this semester is over. I'm considering whether to have comments or not. I'm leaning towards not. Here are a few of the pros and cons that I can see.

Pros

• Could make it easier to build a relationship with readers
• Blogs are "supposed" to have a comment function
• Might motivate me to write high quality content, in order to get positive comments rather than flames

Cons

• Spam
• Scary not to be in control of that part of the web site
• Moderation might take a lot of my time
• Often I judge the value of blogs I visit by the number of comments. Few or no comments means the blog is not very authoritative. Better then to have no comment function at all, to make people judge my blog based on what I write rather than what other people write.
• If people really really want to comment, trackbacks are better for me since it gives me a back link. A comment on my blog does not.

What do you think? Is there any other important pros/cons I've missed?

Do you have comments turned on or off on your blog?

If this is going to be a wordpress blog all you have to do is get the math spam plugin. There was one robot I had attacking my blog. Then I added that plugin and never again recieved a spam message. It also allows the ones that have linked back to my site allowed me to approve them since they where using part of my content as there own then linking to my main article. So elimitating that comment aspect you also eliminate your pingbacks from other blogers. This alone can be devistaing to your blog jmho

[InternetMarketingIQ]

If you walk into a store and they have everything you want... it's huge, it's new, it's clean and it's been open for a couple of months. Now you look around and you see no one is in the store except you. What do you ask yourself next? Do you buy there?

[Tyrus Antas]

Comments provide social proof. Obviously if you have no traffic, you'll have no social proof.

Just a week ago I was watching videos on Yahoo Video. I wondered why the site felt so empty. I felt alone being there. I finally understood what it was: videos had no comments. Even though Youtube comments are mostly useless it gives people validation: they've chosen the website others have.

Tyrus

[Nick Sharp]

You also should consider outsourcing this to a company who is "intelligent" and will not "spam" other blogs. This will make it more time/cost effective.

[melanied]

A lot of traffic to my various blogs comes from long-tail keyword searches for phrases that ONLY appear in the comments. I will never have a niche blog up without comments!

If you use spam-prevention plugins and STILL find that the moderation is a time suck, then you could outsource. Of course, it would have to be someone you trust with your logins. I use family.

[musicproducer]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

I'll say that if that's your attitude you won't have a very successful blog.

I think that post shows a lot more uncalled for "attitude" than I ever did. Care to elaborate?

Originally Posted by ebizib

I see you are new at this. A very good blog, the active blog, that can engage their readers, will get a lot of niche referals without huge efforts. You will also need to be friendly with your list, don't think just money, money, money, but really help those people!

I hope this helps...Ivana

Money money money is about the last thing I'm thinking. I want to build a brand for myself. This is a long term thing.

Originally Posted by internetmarketingiq

If you walk into a store and they have everything you want... it's huge, it's new, it's clean and it's been open for a couple of months. Now you look around and you see no one is in the store except you. What do you ask yourself next? Do you buy there?

Well you nailed it, that's EXACTLY my concern. I'd probably don't - which is stupid since everything else says it's a great store! Your comparison fits the case of having a comment function that no one is using - having no comment function at all is another thing entirely.

Originally Posted by rogerioLidango

At least it's not like a forum, where no posts would be killer.

Well, a forum with "comments" turned off just doesn't make sense, it's like a blog with posting turned off or an email service that doesn't do email. A blog is just a format for publishing stuff online, and the comment function isn't really core. Look at how well tumblr is doing.

Another thing I've realized that I dislike about comments is that having a comment form at the end of the post is a waste of the non-commenting reader's attention. The comment form doesn't say anything, it doesn't help most users. At that point, where someone has finished reading the article, they will be somewhat restless and I need to grab their attention not to risk them leave the site. I'd rather put a link to a few other posts, than a distracting comment form that the absolute majority of all readers will never use.

However, this might just be a question of design. I could probably make it so that the comments are not thrown in your face, but yet easy to find if you're looking for them. Maybe with an accordion of some kind.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by musicproducer

I think that post shows a lot more uncalled for "attitude" than I ever did. Care to elaborate?

Let me narrow down the problem for you...

Originally Posted by musicproducer

I'd rather they spend their time on my site reading my other posts or looking at my portfolio than reading other peoples comments.

If that's your attitude, you don't want a blog, you want a static site, a sterile, non-interactive, pretty site that nobody wants to ever visit more than once.

You build a brand by interacting, by building relationships, not by acting like what other people say is unimportant and beneath you.