About two months ago, I got so frustrated with the comments function on my blog that I decided to turn them off.
Yep. One big machete-like chop and they were gone and with them went … a lot of grief and anguish and irritation.
[Cue big sigh of relief!]
Anyway … I just remembered one very neat benefit of doing that … besides the peace of mind I had thinking I didn’t have to deal with the wierdos who decided to lob unwarranted negativism my way or the self-promoters who merely wanted to advertise their product or service or the suffocating spam I received.
One cool, positive result of turning off those comments was … people took the conversation to their own blogs and linked to my post in their comments.
In other words … it promoted the conversation, only on their own virtual real estate … and in return I got an inbound link out of it.
Now … this is not for everyone. But it could be free you up to concentrate on what you do best … writing great blog content.
I choose to do it on mine because, despite increased traffic, only on rare occasions did my posts spur on a good conversation. I realized I had about 6 people who participated in the conversation, but mostly … they came by to offer encouragement or say “great post.” And they could do that by email anyway. And the time I spent weeding out the junk or self-promoters was distracting me from my goals and strategies.
So I think you gotta decide … is the comments function on your blog worth it?
