Hi Sue,

I'd agree, to an extent. But then again, Seth only turned off his comments after he found his huge audience. Not everyone has that luxury; and for those, comments are definitely the lifeblood of growing you, your blog and your brand.

Cheers! :)

Hi Sue,

I'd agree, to an extent. But then again, Seth only turned off his comments after he found his huge audience. Not everyone has that luxury; and for those, comments are definitely the lifeblood of growing you, your blog and your brand.

Cheers! :)

Whether or not you allow comments on your blog and/or whether or not you have comments moderated or not all goes back to the goals of your blog. Seth isn't trying to "build community" and he gets enough views, RTs, and I'm sure business without needing comments. If you're trying to establish yourself as a subject matter expert, get consulting gigs, encourage people to come back to your blog, comments are an easy way to make that happen. It allows you to get feedback from others and also engage in conversation.

I don't think a blog has to have comments. But, to me, a blog that doesn't have them is more a news source and not somewhere I want to engage.

Love your post, all your reasoning is sound, and most importantly you show how much bad reasoning there is regarding this topic.

It's very frustrating dealing with bloggers who shut off comments, so much so that one of them I don't deal with any more. It's like people want all the attention but don't want to give anyone else even a sliver of recognition. It's a privilege, for the most part, to have comments. I'm happy to give people a place they can be heard.

it helps us get more visitors to your blog, this will make us a profitable and popular

Leah - You know I am going to respond. Moderation of comments is a must in my opinion. While I don't delete comments that may disagree with me. What I do is moderate comments to keep out spam. I also watch comments to make sure readers don't attack each other. While this has only happened once in the last 4 years, I would hate to let one slip by.

I do agree that the conversation among the readers is the key. Interesting thought too on the social component is readers socializing around the blog with the post as a catalyst. Thanks for the insight.

Interesting what you say about Seth saying he feels compelled to respond to all the comments, and that others don't want to deal with moderation. If that's the case, allow the conversation to happen amongst your readers, don't moderate just take the good with the bad. The "social" component can be that your readers are socializing around your blog post as a catalyst. Just a thought. Though it is nice when the blog writer does comment, but I find it unnecessary for the blogger to validate or debate every comment I write...but perhaps that just me.

Jim - thank you so much for adding to the post. And you are right, what irony. Seth using the very platform to reply to your post that he won't let his own readers use.

Another excellent post Grant and some excellent comments too.

Here's some irony for you. When I posted about Seth turning off his comments, he left a comment on MY blog. He was happy to use MY comment facility as a "right to reply" but chooses not to give HIS readers the same opportunity to question his points.

I get around 20 comments a day - sometimes, 100, occasionally 10. I have one post on my blog with almost 700 comments alone. It's bullshit to say that it takes too long to deal with comments. A good spam filter and the ability to read and type at average speed is all that's needed.

Twitter is very much NOT a threat to comments. I hundreds of people visit my site most days, directly via Twitter - many of whom leave comments. In fact, I LOVE what Twitter has done for my blog and my readers. Many of my regular readers would never have heard of my blog, were it not for Twitter.

Just a few of my experiences.

Shelly - Creating community, relationships and the ability to engage with our audience is the key to blogging. If they only want to broadcast, start a news site.

Good thoughts, GG. I agree wholeheartedly. Blogging without comments is, essentially, another form of broadcasting. And here I thought it was all about creating community!

Ali - Your perspective is certainly not a newbie one. Your insight into why comments are important is right on the mark. Now if we can just get all "newbie" bloggers to feel this way.

I think the problem a lot new bloggers have is replying. They feel either uncomfortable doing so. Or they feel like they have nothing else to say. I too find the comments on a blog post to be some of the best part of the entire post. In fact and I have said this before, sometimes the comments are even better than my original post.

And how many times have we actually used a post comment as fodder for a new post or even a series of post. Thanks again Ali for jumping in and engaging in the conversation on this post.

While I do agree. Those who are using a blog to promote and market a business should not shut off comments. Shutting off comments as a business, shuts out your audience. This should be considered by not only online businesses, but offline businesses too.

Here's a newbie's perspective (been blogging since Jan) - I want my blog posts to be useful, valuable and interesting for my reader's. For me, their comments help me to understand them more, their viewpoints, opinions, their challenges, what works for them, what doesn't and so on. So for me it is a no brainer - allow comments, engage and discuss or lose touch with my audience.
Not allowing comments is a bit like inviting someone into your house for a cup of tea and a chat but not letting them speak - it's just rude.

Well, unless you're Kurt Greenbaum... ;-)

http://www.kurtgreenbaumisapussy.com/

I personally don't agree, but not for the reasons you've outlined. You've taken a narrow view of blogging, that it's a community & conversation forum. That simply isn't the case for everyone. Many folks have no intention or desire to interact with a single person. They simply want to write. While blogging has grown and matured in many ways, it's still a form of publishing, plain and simple. For some people it's about the conversation, and that's great. For others, it's simply about writing and giving their own thoughts a place to live.

Danny - Even newspapers are realizing that open comments with their online versions is a must.

Guilty as charged, David. And (as then) I see your viewpoint entirely. Perhaps killing should be replaced with "growing through fractured outlets"? ;-)

Scott's comment to you is one of the reasons I love the guy - he hits the nail on the head in such a simple way, you wonder why there's any other viewpoint. ;-)

I'm with you and Scott on this (and David Spinks in the comments). Blogs breathe new life with comments. Yes, I read a blogger because he or she has something to say I'm interested in hearing. But I also read the blogger for their comments section. I find the best blogs are the ones with open comments and reasoned arguments.

Sure, you can have comments off (or heavily moderated). But why not just run a newspaper instead?

Leon - Good stuff. And I agree. I find it a bit disheartening that those bloggers how have "hit it big" want to shut out the very people who helped to get them where they are. Their readers and commenters.

I actually heard the other day that Darren over at ProBlogger was considering shutting off comments. I sure hope that doesn't happen. My fear is also, if guys like Darren shut off comments, every Tom, Dick, Harry and problogger want-a-be will shut off their comments too. Big mistake all around.

G'Day Grant.
You are right. One of the reasons I started taking the Copyblogger blog was that they really encourage comments. They have a big box after each post saying "to leave a comment." And I notice that Sonia Simone is a dedicated 'responder' and 'coomenter.'

I can't remember who said it, but i think it was the founder of Wrigley's chewing gum back in the 30s.
He was asked why he continued to spend heavily on advertising when he already had 80%+ market share. He replied by saying "if you're speeding across the desert in a train doing 60mph, would you disconnect the engine?"

As a newbie, I'm constantly amazed by all those high-powered bloggers who rattle on about the importance of knowing what you client wants,being client centred and all the rest of it. They then make you search all over their site to discover how to leave a comment!

I think that it's odd that so many web marketers seem obsessed with selling not marketing!

Regards

Leon

David - Exactly. I too find it troubling when a brand new blogger decides to do something someone who has already established themselves in the blogosphere might be doing. Doing so is a huge mistake. Yes, we should follow some of those best practice techniques. But, shutting off comments is not one of them.

I hold the same stance as you do on the issue of blog comments. I've heard many of these arguments too and I disagree.

The "Seth Godin did it" argument is just completely ridiculous. He was huge before he turned comments off. It's impossible to use him as a justifiable case study in comments.

I think it was Danny Brown that had a great discussion on his blog about whether or not twitter was taking away from blog comments. For me, it does two things to HELP my blog comments. 1) If someone just wants to show support for the post, instead of commenting "Great post!" They just tweet it out. So it keeps out the noise (sometimes) 2) That brings in more people to the post, and when someone has a quality response to the blog post, they'll still write it as a comment, not as a tweet.

I try to respond to every comment on my blog because for me, if my blog doesn't have conversation, it has nothing. I want every reader, whether they're regulars, or first time readers, to know I'm listening to them too. Should everyone focus on conversation on their blog? No. I think, in more cases than not, it's better to keep comments turned on.

David, Scribnia.com