Comment Exchanges

[Shawn Gossman]

Have any of your ever done blog comment exchanges?

I see blog comments differently than forum posts. You need posts of a forum in order for the forum to look active. But on a blog, the main articles are the important thing. Comments are really only important if they're real and you're actively engaging with your target audience.

What do you all think about this subject?

Are blog comment exchanges even worth doing?

 

[Heatman]

Personally, I think blog comment exchanges are worth doing because even though blogs can do without them, having them makes the blog look active and not some dumping ground for publishing articles. I've seen so many blogs owners engage in blog comment exchanges because they understand the need to have some chatters on their articles.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

I see many bloggers close comments completely, as if they forget that engagement still matters. I think closing the comments is a bad mistake. Comment exchanges could help with that.

 

[Heatman]

I see many bloggers close comments completely, as if they forget that engagement still matters. I think closing the comments is a bad mistake. Comment exchanges could help with that.

Exactly! You can't bring up a subject, discuss extensively on it and have it published but only to lock the comment section which means that you don't care about people's opinions on what you wanted them to read. It doesn't just make any sense at all.

 

[Shawn Gossman]

Exactly! You can't bring up a subject, discuss extensively on it and have it published but only to lock the comment section which means that you don't care about people's opinions on what you wanted them to read. It doesn't just make any sense at all.

I think a lot of bloggers are closing comments because of spam.

If your niche doesn't need commentor links, you can take that field out using a plugin. I've done it on my hiking blog and it has reduced spam by more than 80% alone.

Also disabled pings and trackbacks on WordPress, those are super outdated. That cuts down a lot of spam, too.

 

[Heatman]

Akismet is the best when it comes to eliminating spams. It doesn't allow any comments to be posted until they are approved. This makes it easier for you to eliminate any spam comments to the best of my knowledge.