I’ve been heard to say that there are three kinds of blog comments: good, bad and spam.

The Good:

Oh, Rich, you’re so smart and good looking. How did you ever get to be so brilliant?

I get a lot of these. They’re good for the soul and ego and I generally let them stand.

The Bad:

You’ve got it completely wrong; Net Neutrality is a communist plot hatched to keep Verizon and AT&T from achieving their noble goal of maximizing shareholder value.

or

Your product/service is complete crap. I bought/rented/leased/stayed at your inn/etc. and found it to be completely unacceptable. The customer service was dreadful.

I’m not especially controversial, so I don’t get a lot of these. However, it’s just a matter of time until some client lets me have it publicly. I spoke to some innkeepers recently, who have to deal with unsatisfied customers now and again, or see negative comments on TripAdvisor.com. They don’t like the idea of having a blog that lets past guests rant against what they perceived as poor service or an uncomfortable bed.

My advice is I’d rather have the conversation go on at my blog–where I have home court advantage–than at TripAdvisor or something similar, where I can’t control the environment. If they complain at my blog, I have an opportunity of rectifying the situation and turning an unhappy customer into an unpaid evangelist for my company.

The Spam:

Visit my Texas Hold-Em site at ….

These you can delete without second thought. You wouldn’t let someone post billboards for their company on your retail store windows, would you?

However, there seems to be a growing fourth type of comment.  It starts as a regular comment, continuing the conversation, but then it suddenly turns into a subtle or not-so-subtle ad for the person leaving it.

The other day someone left a comment at our blog that basically finished with an advertisement for his company that was unrelated to the post. Basically, he was riding the post’s coat tails for search engine benefits (his own). I kept the comment, but edited out the self-promotion bit.

I asked my friend and fellow blogger Lance Duston whether that was fair or not. He responded:

Stymieing annoying self-promotion is about the best reason I can imagine for editing comments.

So it stands. Today I received two nearly identical comments on two separate posts about small business:

Comment One:

Commenter name: JanisPettit
Commenter email: janispattit@gmail.com
Commenter URL: [edited out]
IP address: 61.16.248.130
Authentication: None

Comment:
——–
You have written a good book for which it has focused on small business
for refreshing results,
If you are really motivated to build a thriving small, solo or home
based business and would like to know how to build a profitable
business in one year, this is a great no cost resource.

Comment Two:

Commenter name: Hervy Jonson
Commenter email: janispettit@gmail.com
Commenter URL: [edited out]
IP address: 61.16.248.130
Authentication: None

Comment:
——–
This story describes the Sustainable business like an Awareness to
Action on Business. And also tells the improve the workplace
productivity. I had the information on Small Business, If you are
really motivated to build a thriving small, solo or home based business
and would like to know how to build a profitable business in one year,
this is a great no cost resource.

Besides the atrocious English, the fact that despite using two different names they use the same email address, besides just being there to drive traffic to their site, the comments add nothing to the ongoing conversation.

Like everything else in life, it’s not the quantity of comments you get, it’s the quality. I just wish I wasn’t attracting so many Web marketers who just don’t get it.

Rich Brooks
Maine Business Blogger