Comments, comments, comments… Some bloggers hate ’em. Some love ’em. It’s a personal choice; there’s no right or wrong to it.

In my experience, enabling comments accelerates your blog’s growth organically because you’re planting the seeds for a community to sprout around you.

But if you’re gonna do comments, you gotta go all in and do ’em right.

Think of the comment area as your very own town square where folks make the effort to come from the far reaches of the web to write to you. They choose your blog out of millions out there! It’s a honor.

But with town squares come great responsibilities. 

Your people are like any other — they want to be heard. Acknowledge their comments — at the least thank them for chiming in (whether you agree with ’em nor not). Check your spam/approval queues religiously to free legitimate comments so they’re not lost in limbo. 

Set the tone by making your comment area a warm and friendly place. And if someone acts like a jerk, kick ’em out. It’s your place, your rules. 

Keep the square clean – fumigate spam as soon as you get a whiff of it (be smart and save time by leveraging available anti-spam tools).

That’s the basics… There’s more.

Ally at The Spectacled Bean went on a roundabout and hit up a bunch of new blogger’s comment areas. Her varying experiences were eye-opening and sobering.

Her insights shine light on what might not be so obvious to us how we can make our blogs more “comment friendly” to readers. 

Take a gander at The Perks and Pitfalls of Reaching Out to Newfound Bloggers.

Be sure to check her comment area out while you’re there — with over 300 replies from fellow bloggers and readers, it’s a resounding refrain of her experiences.

(Also take note of how she’s responded to every comment!)

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