Are blog comments something you look forward to moderating or do you feel they are holding you back from more important tasks? Blog commenting has long been considered a way to allow your readers to take a more active ‘role’ in the growth and development of your site! For the site administrator however this means they must also take the time to review and respond to each comment left! Is the time invested in reviewing your readers remarks and responses to what you’ve posted better put to use in some other area?
Here are 3 valid arguments as to why you may want to consider disallowing people from leaving comments on your blog!
Harmful Spam
Damn spam! We get that crap in our mail, email, telemarketing calls and yes, even blog commenting has been known to display evidence of spam, gasp! Now that Google has ‘proclaimed’ spammy commenting or delinquent links find therein, will cost bloggers, spam has become even more repulsive! Now suppose for a moment you didn’t even allow your readers to comment, good bad or otherwise, or a way to do so anyway, than of course the litter called spam wouldn’t be a concern to you would it? Additionally now that you don’t have to invest the effort to sniff out spam in each and every comment, there is nothing holding you back from getting an early start on your next blog post!
Time Consuming
One thing most bloggers have in common is they are always pressed for time! Developing content takes time just to find a topic you can focus on and than don’t get me started on the research! The point here is this, if your readers were asked to decide between being able to leave a comment or having fresh content to view, they likely will choose the latter! Unfortunately blog commenting has an ‘evil’ side and that is it’s high maintenance and time consuming, at least for the blogger!
Writing Defensively
Let’s face it, once you have people commenting on your blog, you tend to post updates that ‘please’ these very same visitors! While this may appear to be a good thing, it does keep you from being a bit more daring, creative or edgy when creating something new for your readers and sadly, this is what they want! Let’s face facts, standing out or taking a stance can definitely give you a edge as a blogger, but allowing your readers to influence what you think or create limits you as well as your success!
Although blog comments left by your readers can be helpful and encouraging to your writing efforts, the time they take to ‘monitor’ may be holding you back! As discussed above there are some very compelling reasons for you to consider not allowing blog commenting on your site! When you consider your readers are in search of fresh content relevant to their interests, perhaps your time is better spent developing more of what they want! For this reason and the others reviewed above it would seem allowing people to leave remarks holds the potential to introduce more bad than good to your platform! Just a thought!
