Be careful on how difficult you make it for others to post a comment on your blog.
A few months back, a subscriber wrote me an email. She told me how difficult it was to add a comment onto my blog. At that time, someone had to click once to get to the sign up page, subscribe, and then submit the comment, then it went through my approval process. Eventually getting added.
After thinking about her suggestion…and coming across another site the very next day requiring this same process, I realized I wouldn't even go through this process. It was too much effort.
I understand the reasoning behind this…spam blocking. That was my reason too. However, there's more to this…it's really being done so they can sell you something. By going through this process you are giving them permission to contact you.
I'm a person all for marketing. And the strategy you use on the blog is your choice to use. However, this wasn't the purpose of my blog. So, I knew I needed to change it. And I did.
Since then, I've made it a lot easier for readers to post a comment. Yes, I still approve them because there is a challenge of spam. And like this morning I received another post from Mariam which uses the same comment wording every time with her URL plastered afterwards. She's trying to build readership the wrong way.
Today, I ran into the same problem…using the marketing strategy. I've been a subscriber to "copyblogger" for about two months now. Thus far, I haven't like 98% of the posts there. They never said much, if anything, that were on topic and interested me, and I'm a copywriter. I was just about to unsubscribe this week if I didn't see any improvement when I read today's post. It's about how people say they want to hear the truth, yet when it comes time to hearing the truth they can't handle it. And it's so true.
I wanted to comment but ran into the same problem…it would take me five minutes to do so (and I'm already a subscriber). What made it even harder was their wording. Which click do I use?
I've attached a pdf file so you can see a blown-up detail of the wording challenge I'm talking about. Copyblogger bad example (PDF)
This is a good lesson for all of us, not just on a blog, but on our web sites, and in our emails – "How many hoops do we make people go through to get to the result?" Now if you do this on purpose to weed people out, then good for you. But I don't applaud you. Our reader/visitor's time is just as important as ours. It's my belief we need to respect it the same.
