Dealing with Negative Comments on Your Blog

Negative comments left on your blog articles just come with the territory, especially as your blog gets increasingly popular. They are a fact of life. It’s up to you as a blogger to determine the best way to handle these negative comments, but read on for a few pointers I’m offering up based on my personal experience.

Before I list the pointers, it’s important for you to keep in mind the message you want to convey with your blog as you moderate and deal with negative comments. Comments are still a reflection of your bog, to a certain extent. Determining how you will deal with them is a matter of preference, and will ultimately set the precedence for how you as a blogger are perceived by your readers.

Spam Comments

Generally these are easy to deal with. if you use a blogging platform like Wordpress or Blogger, spam comments are readily kept at bay with the spam blockers that come standard on your blog. Go through some of these spam comments every so often to ensure that they all are in fact spam comments. Rest easy, though, knowing that you don’t have to do a lot of manual work in order to go through every single comment to make sure it’s not spam.

Random Negativity

Some people leave negative comments just to get attention, or because they don’t have much else to do. Comments that merely say “you suck” or other random words of negativity or profanity are usually not directed at you, so don’t take them personally. Simply delete them and keep it moving.

Direct Negativity

Some people leave negative comments to spark a little discussion. These commenters mean what they’re saying, they’re just not using the social norms of common courtesy when sharing their personal opinion. Read these with care, and try to dig down to their main point instead of letting your emotions run away from you. There may be a useful point buried in the depths of their negative comment.

Regardless of whether or not the negative comment had a trace of usefulness, you need to decide how you will respond to the comment, if at all. There is the option of deleting it, but this may be considered a cop out and other readers as well as the commenter may notice that you’re simply ignoring a comment.

If it’s completely invalid, don’t feel badly about deleting it. Should you choose to respond to the comment, you could try being nice. Sometimes responding to negativity with positivity will solve the problem, and the negative commenter will realize that they were initially over the top.

Sometimes responding to a negative comment with an equal amount of negativity is the way to go. It’s not in my personality to do so, but I do realize that some bloggers can in fact leverage negative comments to their advantage. Spurring a negative commenter can get other commnters to participate in the discussion taking place in your comments thread and increase your site traffic.

Every once in a while, the entertainment of such a comment thread can be worth the woes of dealing with that negative commenter. Who knows? Discussions with them on your blog may become a welcome extension of your blog, giving readers a reason to return to your site on a regular basis.

Written by Kristen Nicole from Kristen Nicole
Posted on August 19th, 2009 and filed under Blogging
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