Just about every blog out on the web allow visitors to the blog to post comments on what has been written. These comments may pertain to the blog posting or may be completely unrelated (people say the darndest things!). The comments may also be positive or negative in nature.
Regardless of the type of comment left by a visitor, you (as聽 the blogger) may choose to deal with these comments in a number of different ways.聽 With several different ways to handle each comment, regardless of which one you do, you should definitely address the comment one way or another.
You can:
- answer these comments,
- block individual visitors from leaving comments in the future
- use administrative features to delete comments, or,
- set the blog to require approval of the comments before they are posted on the blog.
Let’s talk about these options, shall we?
Answering Comments Left On Your Blog
Bloggers who receive comments on their blog may wish to address and answer comments left by readers. WordPress allows you to post comments on your own blog which enables the you to answer comments directly. With this feature you can deal with a number of different situations including negative comments, positive comments and questions.
If someone leave you a ‘not-so-nice’ or negative comments on your blog, you may opt to answer these comments directly with a rebuttal to the negative comments. This allows you to recognize the criticism and defend your original post.
If someone leaves a positive comment on your blog, you may also wish to answer these comments to thank the visitors for the praise. In some cases, you may receive comments which ask a question about the blog post or about you yourself! In this case, you may choose to answer these questions to develop a better relationship with the blog visitors.
Negative comments or controversy on your site is not a bad thing! In fact, it is pretty good! It shows that people are reading what you are writing, and they are taking the time to comment back! This gets a dialogue started and gets people coming back to your site for more! As I have said before, traffic to your site is a good thing!
Blocking Comments from Individual Visitors
Another option for dealing with blog comments which are negative in nature is to block comments from individual blog visitors. In most cases you have the ability to block a particular user from leaving comments on your blog.
You may wish to use this option in situations where the comments from the blog visitor are extremely mean spirited; you may also wish to ban individual blog visitors from making comments if he/she has the visitor continues to post negative comments. You can decided to ban an individual blog visitor from making comments if he believes the comments are being left as spam.
Comment spam is a very big problem these days. You can read more about Fake Blog Comments.
Using Administrative Features
Still another option for dealing with comments on a blog includes using administrative features to delete comments or modify the settings to not allow comments to be displayed until the blogger approves them.
Blog owners typically have the ability to delete a comment left by a blog visitor. Deleting these comments is quite a simple process.
However, it is not a completely effective method because other blog visitors may have the opportunity to read these comments before they are deleted . Therefore, deleting the comment may prevent some visitors from reading the comment but will not ensure the comment is not seen by any blog visitors. However, there is a way for you to make sure visitors do not read negative comments. WordPress has the option to require the blogger to approve all comments before they become available to the public. This gives the blogger the ability to delete a comment before it is read by any of the blog visitors. The blogger can simply delete any comments they do not wish others to read before the comments are published.
My comment feature is pretty liberal. Once l’ve approved someone, they can leave comments and l don’t need to approve it overtime. I have only had to block one commenter for a really horrible comment, thank goodness..
If you are blogging long enough, you are bound to get that bad egg that leaves an inappropriate comment!
The only comments I block are those that only hoist sexual perversions on the world or those (it may be one person with multiple accounts) that seem to tell a story completely unrelated to ANYTHING on my entire blog.
I’m with you- controversy is fine. And every comment (even those whom I block, mentioned above) merits a reply.
I agree with you agreeing with me, Roy! 馃檪
I try to comment to those who leave a comment. It may take me a while but I think if someone took time to comment, I can take time to let them know I appreciate it.
Amen! Nice job! Thanks.
I always respond to comments (unless I somehow miss them, which has happened occasionally.) I don’t enjoy negative ones, but I only block or delete them if it seems like spam. Thanks for walking us through the options!
I use a plugin that helps me NOT miss any comments! You can check it out if you want over at https://wordpress.org/plugins/comments-not-replied-to/ – this is the one I use on this site.
I am getting better with replying to comments left on my blog (and I have admin approval set to ON for all comments currently).. the only comments I have deleted so far are the obviously spam ones (luckily, have not had any other comments I felt the need to delete yet)…
some spam comments make for fun reading though … I am actually reading a story in parts through some of them
Very interesting, Vidya! How is the story coming? Is it via comments left?
I also reply to a comment left and I also like those comments that may be a bit on the controversial side. Can you imagine if everyone agreed with everything??? We wouldn’t have much to write about! LOL
Good point, Martha!