I took a fresh plunge into blogging again.
Made the website pleasing enough.
Did not forget the golden rule of lean start-up.
That if the website is not embarrassing than you over-polished it. It was a relative breeze with a static stack.
No database or complicated hosting environment involved.
Yet I couldn’t sneak around the big question:
To let them comment or not.
I’ve been here before.
Back then I boiled it down to two practical solutions.
Disqus.
And Facebook.
I start with the lesser evil.
Disqus lives off of your readers data.
What Facebook does the same?
My wife came to the rescue when she asked: “So, do you need commenting at all, hun?”
I replied: “I love you for this question luv.”
Then spiraled into yet another desktop research.
With this brief statement as a result:
It’s up to you.
I feel you burn for my reasons not to allow commenting.
#1 Social platforms brought down the quality of human discussion
I am still looking for the data to support this point.
Till I find the data read about this survey commissioned none other than Craig Newmark, Craigslist’s founder about the social media inflicted trolling.
#2 Can better use your time
Drawing a straight line from reason number one.
You got comment pinging at your inbox.
You open the email.
Click the link.
Read the comment.
How much more complicated it can get?
I bet you can better use your precious time.
Examples of simplified blogs with no commenting:
OK I hear your response.
Those fellas are beacons.
And I can introduce better tools to handle spam comments et al.
Ali Luke came up with three points on Problogger to help the average Joe with handling comments.
Yet the solutions offered are wordpress based.
And they don’t fear mentioning Disqus and Facebook as solutions to handle comments.
Anyway I bend it this sucks on your time and decision power.
#3 Most commenters falls outside interesting buckets
The best way I’ve seen this put is by Everett Bogue.
So, I recap the three types are.
- Mislead, rookie bloggers 50%
- Random confused stumblers 25%
- People who care deeply about your work 25%
Then he expands that the interesting 2
Already has their own blogs.
Or end up having one.
So if they care to comment.
They can write a blog post in reply.
Social media sharing is another form within the same theme.
#4 Your blog is not a Medium publication
Medium nails commenting.
And a load of other things.
I hope they’ll survive and thrive.
But as any platforms it has its own caveats.
And by definition it’s not owned media by a long shot.
So, we have to resort to math.
#5 Data doesn’t support it
There is no correlation found.
Between commenting.
And traffic.
Leave alone conversion.
You needn’t take my word.
Read this piece from optinmonster.com.
Take away
I am not saying you shouldn’t let people comment on your brilliant blog post.
But it makes sense to make that basic trade off analysis.
And make the call wisely.
Ok, if your don’t have your place to write up a nice post in reply.