Every time a blog doesn’t have the ability for a reader to leave comments, I think that blog is broken.
Sure, there is social media. You can tweet a link with your comment. Or share the blog post on Facebook. Sharing power! However, lacking is the ability to easily see other people’s comments. I could hunt down the blog’s Facebook Page or their Twitter account to see if they posted the article there–with comments. But too much work! The comments need to be right there–on the blog post. Your blog should be building community, not just shouting to an empty room. Especially if your blog is geared to people being a fan of your product.
Blackwing is a pencil manufacturer with a following that LOVES their product. Blackwing pretty much has to cater to the fans, because after all, they are selling pencils. What makes these pencils special are the people who use them: Disney animators, authors like John Steinbeck, and music composers.
Today Blackwing Pencils blogged about how they sold out of their No. 56 pencil. This Joe DiMaggio pencil was so popular with the Blackwing fans, that their supply ran out eight days after the launch. I am one of the people who bought a 12-pack of Blackwing No. 56 pencils for $25. When Blackwing sells out of a limited edition, it’s because of their fans. Why would Blackwing want to not allow comments on their blog? It shuts off their fans.
If you have a blog with comments disabled, why? I’d like to develop a list of reasons why publishers don’t enable comments on their site.
I’ll kick-start the reasons why blogs don’t enable comments.
A few years ago, I explored a couple reasons why blogs don’t have comments. Why comments should be enabled on all blogs:
1) The blogger doesn’t care what you think.
2) Too many spammers and haters
3) There
Here’s another reason:
4) The fear of having zero comments. With everyone being on Facebook, bloggers are afraid that their blog will look dead with the lack of activity. (However, I would argue that you shouldn’t withhold things out of fear. You should enable your fans any chance to interact with you).
I found this page in a search engine and here is my comment:
The majority of bloggers these days seem to be using blogspot.com. I have never been able to comment on any of those blogs, regardless of whether I post as anonymous or with a Google account. The comment simply disappears without an error message. And there is often no way to inform the author that comments are being lost. When I did manage to reach some bloggers, a few were aware of the problem, but no one has any idea why it works for some readers and not others. Maybe Google’s censorship algorithm is broken.
I dont necessarily expect you to know the solution, but I do want bloggers to know that blogspot.com is a highly unreliable platform that will alienate many of your readers.
This has happened to me many times where I leave a comment, and nothing appears. Many blogs don’t immediately publish a comment once a reader submits it. These blog owners have their comments sit in a queue in their system, and then they hand-review each comment, deciding which to approve and which to reject.
When my comments don’t immediately first appear, often they will appear after a week when the blog owner has approved my comment. Give it some time, your comments might just have to be approved.
> These blog owners have their comments sit in a queue in their system, and then they hand-review each comment.
I had considered that, but some of the bloggers I was able to reach are telling me they dont hold comments for review, and comments are still being lost. They said they frequently receive complaints about it, but dont know why its happening randomly.