There are three types of comments that might get left at your blog: good, bad and spam.
For those of you new to blogging, you may not realize that spam is not just for email and sandwiches anymore.
Spam can cover anything that changes the signal to noise variable. In other words, spam is garbage content that reduces the value of communication by filling our media with unnecessary noise, making it more difficult to receive the signal.
Spam commentary is often obvious: it has nothing to do with the topic and goes on to create links (and often PageRank) to sites promoting Viagra, low-cost mortgages and Texas Hold ‘Em.
Often, it’s a little more difficult to discern. Is someone who just leaves a message of "Great post!" giving honest feedback or are they just creating another link to their own Web site or blog? There’s no hard and fast way to know, and often whether or not I delete comments like that depends on the mood I’m in and how many cups of coffee I’ve downed.
If you determine that a comment (or trackback) is spam, it’s your duty as a blogger to delete that comment. Not deleting comment spam is the sign of a bad neighbor.
Negative comments are a stickier wicket, however. Part of what makes blogs so interesting is the fact that it’s a truly interactive medium. Visitors to your blog can give you immediate feedback on what you’ve written. If you are blogging about soon to be released products or services, you can pick the brains of your readers for feedback.
However, it can be painful when someone has negative things to say about you or your company. Furthermore, if you’re talking about a client and THEY get bad mouthed the situation can get even trickier.
I don’t write about too many controversial topics, but I have received a few negative comments since I started blogging.
My recommendation is to keep them up, for a few reasons.
- Deleting [non-spam] comments can come across as censorship. If you, your company or your blog is well known enough, it’s likely that someone will discover you’re deleting negative comments and will start blogging about that. Nothing is ever as bad as the cover up that’s supposed to hide it.
- There’s no such thing as bad publicity. Getting negative comments means people are reading your blog and feeling engaged (or enraged) by it. You’re probably doing your job.
- You learn more from negative comments than positive ones. Negative commentary can be much more effective in showing you where you or your company falls short so that you can address the issue.
- Better to have negative comments on your own blog than someone else’s. If people feel that their negative comments will be quickly whitewashed, they’ll post their negative comments somewhere else…somewhere you have no control. If you can get angry customers to vent at your blog you can also address the issues they bring up. Plus, people who have posted negative comments will often come back and publicly thank you when things go right.
