No Commenting?!
Earlier this week, I was talking with graphic designer Kat Love about why some bloggers choose not to allow commenting on their blogs. To me, that’s like publishing a book and then forbidding readers to discuss it with each other! It just doesn’t make sense.
But, as Kat pointed out, some bloggers might simply prefer to be contacted in a different manner.
While that may be true for some of you, I know from talking to hundreds of you about this issue that fear is a different reason that many of you choose to prevent commenting on your blog.
There’s also “I don’t want to be bothered” and “I don’t have time” and “What if a client identifies himself in the comments as being my client?”
And this one comes up a lot – “I don’t want someone to threaten to kill herself and me have to address that right there on my blog” or “What if someone threatens suicide or homicide and I don’t catch it in time and someone dies on my watch?!” – both of which, of course, are really “I don’t know how to respond or what to do” if either of those situations arise.
Did I cover most of your objections? Well, we will be talking more about commenting in BlogStart for Therapists when I start my next round of classes next week!
Rethinking Those Comments
With that in mind, I thought this might be the right time to talk with you about some of the reasons you absolutely should be allowing (and even encouraging) commenting on your blog if the primary purpose of your blog is to get seen, get known, get liked, and get trusted to attract your ideal clients!
I get it if you think that commenting may be distracting to your readers and take the focus away from you or something else that you might want them to focus on – like your opt-in form or your call-to-action.
Or, maybe you think that comments just visually clutter up a web page and don’t add anything of substance.
If either of these is true for you, I want you to consider that not all of us feel that way when we’re checking out your blog.
In fact, a lot of us are actually looking for ways to connect with you – the blogger – especially if we’re thinking about doing business with you!
“Why?” you might ask.
Because before I am ever going to sit in a room and spill my deepest, darkest secrets to you, I have to trust you!
And, before I have to trust you, I have to figure out that I like you!
And, before I figure out that I like you, we need to hang out together and get to know each other a little bit!
And, frankly, I’m not going to hang out with someone who does all the talking and then acts like she knows who I am, what I’m about, and what I need without first listening to me!
Need More Reasons?
There are lots of other reasons that you need to enable commenting if you are using blogging as one tool to build your practice.
If I’m your favorite potential client, I’m reading your blogs every day and usually finding all that great information and inspiration I am looking for.
But, here’s the truth -as much as I love the great content that you are providing and how beautifully you string your words together to turn a phrase, it’s the comments that most often have the juice in them for me! It’s those comments from my peers that are causing me to re-examine my own choices or are encouraging me to take my next steps!
It’s the interactions between readers or the interactions between you and your readers that seem to catch and hold my attention or draw out that extra little nugget that I needed. Those show me who you are (as well as who they are).
And, all of that is so much more interesting to me than some old fart who tries to tell me what to do just blabbing away at me, like old-school-push-marketing where the business owner wants to tell me what they want me to hear and we never interact at all!
Bloggers lose my interest really quickly when they just talk at me.
In fact, it’s entirely likely I won’t even go back a 2nd or 3rd time to a site if you don’t let me interact with you. If this holds true for most of your other visitors to your website or you don’t make it easy for them to connect with you personally, think about how many potential clients / resources / evangelists you are missing every single day!
Bread Crumbs Straight to Your Door
Showing up to engage with those in your audience who want to engage with you is like leaving bread crumbs for Hansel and Gretel! Just by showing up to the conversations you are building trust and leading your readers right back to your door!
And, don’t forget those occasions when you’ve gotten something wrong or someone wants to take issue with you. Allowing your readers to address those issues publicly is invaluable!
Why? Because it shows your audience how it is that you choose to deal with confrontation and challenges! Commenting allows them to see that you and they can bump up against each other with your differences and still be OK.
That’s HUGE – especially when you reader is thinking about going to see you (a stranger) who may find her girlfriend, her life choices, her religion, or frankly just her to be “odd.”
It can be comforting for potential clients to see that you aren’t perfect, that you can be wrong and still be OK.
Putting on your big girl panties and cleaning up your public messes in public really can tip the scale in your favor if you have the courage to do so.
Precious Gifts for You from Your Biggest Fans
Then, there are all the great ideas that readers bring to you (knowingly or not) by peppering their biggest concerns, most astute observations, and favorite resources into their comments.
When your readers do this they are introducing themselves to you in tiny little snippets for you to get to know (and respond to) like tiny little offerings all while adding literal quality, usefulness, and interest to your website.
Oh, I almost forgot! If you know how the search engines work, you already know that all that extra yumminess and goo that comes with each of those fabulous comments are like virtual delicacies for those search engines!
That’s what the search engines love to eat – new, relevant content. It broadens the keywords on your site and creates the organic long-tail keywords that keep your website moving up in the ranks.
If what you are doing is working for you, then good for you! Keep at it! But if you find that you aren’t meeting the goals you have for your website (And, yes, we’ll be talking about goals and planning for you website / blog in BlogStart for Therapists, too!), you might want to take a look at this perspective.
Your Website Needs to Be Your Hub
And, back to those initial objections for enabling commenting on your blog . . . . If you are using Facebook or Twitter or some other platform to have all those juicy conversations rather than hosting them on your very own website, you’re making a HUGE MISTAKE.
Maybe you started out online in junior high school using social media primarily for social reasons. If so, hanging out on social media back then was “just for fun” and now hanging out on those sites just feels “native” to you.
But once you started your own business, you may have assumed that because that’s where the bulk of your friends and contacts are hanging out, that Facebook or some other platform is where you feel most at home. And, that’s why you decided to use those places as your “home online.”
But, listen up! From a business and risk management perspective, that’s not smart!
The reason that’s not smart is because, of course, you don’t own those spaces and they can go change or go away at any time – and they have!
Doing the bulk of your business on Facebook or Twitter is no different than renting an apartment, knocking out walls, putting in a new kitchen with new cabinetry and appliances, and even a pool out back and then fussing when the landlord says he wants you to move out.
No. You cannot take the new kitchen appliances and cabinetry with you.
And, oh, yeah – The pool stays here, too.
I’ve seen therapists lose 7 years worth of content and artists lose all their professional images of their work and, perhaps even worse, I’ve seen seen business owners lose their entire audiences overnight simply because they were sharecropping their online spaces!
Do the Smart Thing for You (and Your Clients)
So . . . back to BlogStart for Therapists . . . . Did I mention that the new series starts next week and that we’ll also be talking about risk management in blogging and how get people to even find your blog, and a whole lot more?
I’ve got seats to fill and I would love to have you join me.
But even if you don’t sign up to take BlogStart for Therapists today, whatever you do . . . please enable commenting on your blog.
Join the conversations.
Help your ideal clients find you, get to know you, learn to trust you, and pick up the phone to call you!
You have important work to do and your potential clients are just waiting to start those life-altering conversations with you.
And, if you’ve already started engaging with your readers, how’s that going for you? I’m serious. I really want to know!
[And, a big THANK YOU to Kat Love for helping me flesh out my thinking about this topic.]
Tamara,
Love this! I do a lot of freelance content writing for therapy services, and look forward to sharing this with the next one who worries about going public with sensitive topics or questions the need for a blog.
However, I also meet many who have the opposite problem: they want comments but never get any! Often it’s simply because they never ask (or ask specific questions that commenters will want to answer).
Hi, Katherine! Thanks so much for dropping in to Private Practice from the Inside Out! I love hearing from freelancers and writers because your strengths are often things that psychotherapists and coaches can lean on and learn from. Happy to have you here!
I suppose that psychotherapists are at the top of the list for having concerns about the sensitive nature of some people’s comments and needing to know how to deal with them. It was a huge fear for me, too, when I started blogging. However, what I know now (that I didn’t know then) is that there are lots of appropriate ways to minimize the likihood of that happening and when it does, there are appropriate steps to take to address them. Let me know if you run into one of those situations and get stuck! I’m happy to problem-solve with you or your client!
And, as for that second problem i.e. “No one comments on my blog!” . . . you’re exactly right! First, you have to ASK! Hmmm. I think I’ll write a blog post on this very topic! Thanks for the idea, Katherine.
I look forward to having your voice here back in the conversations real soon!
I SO appreciate you taking a strong stance about commenting and encouraging people to look past the fear! I think getting rid of comments is sort of like doing a community talk and then taking no questions- because we are fearful that someone might say something problematic. We know a group function isn’t the best spot to respond to suicide- but we figure it out. Something with a blog- although I’ve never experienced that.
On the other hand, I have known some therapists that were harassed for weeks/months by individuals who were struggling through blog comments. There are always outliers where it may make sense to turn the comments off if it is just not leading to a healthy conversion- or at least make them moderated! I use Disqus for blog comments and have really liked the options it gives me to keep the spam and the funkiness away! Thanks again Tamara!
Hi, Miranda! Thanks so much for dropping in!
I know you stay so busy but it’s great to have you here!
I think every therapist should moderate their comments; it’s part of risk management for a therapist.
Spam catchers like Disqus and Akismet (for WordPress users) can drastically reduce the amount of spam and trolls that show up in comments.
Bloggers who have no interest in engaging with their audiences are not significantly different from the tele-marketing phone calls that intrude upon on family time at dinner.
Hi Tamara,
I agree with you. Comments do have great value for a blog. It gives the writer a chance to elaborate on subjects that he/she otherwise had not thought of, build relationships and a lot more.
Another thing is getting people to comment – that can sometimes be a challenge in itself. If you don’t have super outstanding content, and if you don’t have a loyal audience yet, then asking simple questions work best in my opinion.
I found also found that you can get more comments by making it easier to comment. Things that often make it more troublesome to comment can be: requesting captcha, forcing an avatar or requesting a login.