The goWholesale Blog

Comment Etiquette - Say What?

May 7th, 2008

If you are in any way involved in a blog you know that positive comments are awesome, negative comments are…well, good for balanced feedback and spam comments are downright infuriating. Its the latter variety that this post is about.

You know them when you see them. Sometimes they are blatant, “Great blog! Visit my site www.bestsiteintheworld.com!”

Sometimes they are incoherent, “Greek should thy savage health insurance agents make light business contact manager windows mobile wheat.” (Whaaa?)

But most of the time, they are a little sneakier than that (in response to one of my Valentine’s Day Trend Alert posts), “Its true! We sell more Heart Valentines Day Votive candles on blacktaisaltco.com months after V Day. The Pure Himalayan Salt Lamps and regular Crystal Salt Votive candle holders sell during valentines day… most people send them to themselves as presents and not to anyone else… we had a questionnaire…proves our point.”

Yeah…so clearly, that’s marketing at work but because it was relevant to the blog post I felt inclined to allow it. And it didn’t make me feel very good either. It got me wondering if there is any sort of formal comment etiquette out there that would help marketers who are posting these comments to get what they want and not tick off bloggers?

My research led me to a SmallBusinessNewz.com article on the subject. The article’s author Chris Crum writes about how each blogger generally makes up their own policy regarding comments. There is quite a range from very lenient to very strict and not all of them are made known to commenters/readers. He links to Daria Black’s The Blogger’s Guide to Comment Etiquette which outlines guidelines the average blogger uses. Be sure to pay heed to number 1 on the list (it IS number 1 for a reason ya know…).

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