I subscribe to several professional blogs and as such, receive notifications about posts that may be of interest to me. This morning I followed one of the links that intrigued me, and was led to a video about a young entrepreneur from Silicon Valley who is doing business in an unusual way. Great interview — short and sweet (roughly 5 minutes). So the content lived up to what was promised.
However, when I scrolled down to look at the responses to this video, here is what I saw:
Keep in mind that this comment appeared in the number one slot on a blog that is affiliated with one of the country’s leading television stations. A site that gets thousands of viewers a day. The name of the site isn’t important, but the lesson from its oversight with having this comment appear is.
Now I have been blogging for more than three years, so I have had my share of these “love” comments show up in my comment section. But they never see the light of day because I always delete them. I don’t care if publishing this nonsense would send my blog’s Alexa rating through the roof — there comes a point where you have to distinguish between your reputation and your numbers.
I know for a fact from reading lots of blogs that there are people who post EVERY comment they receive, no matter how ludicrous or irrelevant. To me, this is simply foolish, and reduces the credibility of the blogger. Everything that appears on your blog or website should be deliberate (which is why comment automation can backfire — if you aren’t pay attention to your comments because you have them on “plug and play” mode, you could be publishing some really embarrassing stuff).
Will this comment make or break the blog? No. It’s too big and has too many followers for that to happen. But in my opinion, a blog this size should have someone in charge of monitoring comments and keeping the irrelevant ones out and only the relevant ones in.
For smaller blogs, however, it pays to pay attention, comments and all. People do notice things and may be too polite to say something. If you are regularly writing in the blogosphere, take the time to go through your comments and showcase only those that are relevant to what you have written. Delete the rest. Your personal brand — and your readers — will be the better for it.
What are your thoughts? What is the most irrelevant comment you’ve received on your blog? Share your stories here and pass this post along to people you believe could benefit from this message.
I would have to say Mary Lou that at least one quarter of my comments I have to delete because either it is an automated one, or it is a “pitch” for someone’s business. If it doesn’t pertain to my content, it doesn’t go on my comments. I urge people all the time to READ the blog, and write down what they have learned from it. Also one of my pet peeves are the ones that say “great blog…way to go” and things like that. A comment has to be a genuine comment with good content just as our blogs are.
I am so glad you brought up this point. Many people out there are looking for quantity. I prefer quality. That’s my two cents!
Blessings,
Donna
Donna, The “quantity vs quality” debate will go on forever, and in the blogosphere, it seems that quantity trumps quality more often than not. It will be interesting to see how things evolve in the years to come as the Internet matures and all the nonsense out there either takes over or gets shoved away by an audience that demands quality. I am with you — quality is much better! I’d rather have no comments on my blog than a string of superficial responses from folks who clearly didn’t read what I wrote, or spam comments that an automated program approved and posted without me seeing what was written.
Hi Mary Lou,
Wow this is such a timely post as it’s been a bee in my bonnet for a while! I couldn’t agree more with you in terms of the harm it can do to your brand. For a start, it looks like either the blog owner isn’t very bright or they are just plain lazy. I’ve seen so many really savvy marketers who don’t seem to be able to detect what a spam comment is, as their entire comments area consists of ‘great blog’ etc.
Another thing that not many people realize is that approving these comments can harm your SEO. Spam commenters link to spam sites and dodgy IP addresses. This doesn’t look good to the googlebot when they see the majority of your activity coming from spammers. And given that google is taking ‘social signals’ into account, the reputation/authority of the commenter or ‘sharer’ is starting to carry more and more weight when it comes to ranking factors.
Thanks for allowing me to chime in and air my thoughts!
Michaelé
Michaele, Thank you for sharing the details about spammy comments and how they affect SEO rankings. I am actually happy to know that Google is cracking down on all the garbage cluttering up the Internet and giving points to quality vs. quantity. I realize that automation online is a very powerful thing, and when monitored properly can yield big results. But with a blog? Automatically approving comments is obviously not the way to go as it can lead to some embarrassing and perhaps even harmful outcomes.
Mary Lou,
Great post and great reminder. I typed in the title of the blog post, it brought me to a CBS blog. It looks like the blog post has been finally deleted. In any event, you are so correct in that we must monitor our comments daily. I let commentors comments appear immediately because I am someone who likes immediate feedback. But I do like to check at least once a day to make sure nothing spammy or shady has appeared. We also need to keep in mind that our comments on political and “news” blogs will also appear in google searches for our name, so just because you are not posting on a tech blog doesn’t mean it won’t be seen by your followers at some point.
Thanks,
Jupiter Jim
Jim, The busier we are online, the more footprints we leave behind. Any place we stop and interact will create a record, which can be a very good part of an overall online strategy. The fact that you keep up with what’s happening on your sites, as well as being a deliberate online user, speaks highly of you. We work so hard to create valuable content, deliver results for our audiences, and develop our brands — we owe it to ourselves and our “tribes” to keep up with what does — and does not — appear on our sites! Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this. I appreciate you! Mary Lou