Blog Comments Policy: We All Need One

Since taking over the responsibility of managing Dinkum Interactive’s Blog, my thoughts have continually returned to the creation of a Blog Comments Policy. As anyone that has ever managed a blog knows, spammy comments are a continual problem and with the desire to keep the blog relevant and useful, some comments just don’t belong. Moreover, a recent Philadelphia Social Media Club meeting highlighted the importance of being transparent in other related policies. This is especially true for blogs used for business.

What is a Comments Policy?

A Comments Policy is a statement defining your policy regarding comments on your blog and informs the reader of what you will allow on your blog, what you will not allow, and what they are allowed to do. It is a form of “responsibility statement” to clearly define each party’s rights and responsibilities.

Why Is a Comments Policy Needed?

Interaction by commenting is a key ingredient to any blog, but a solid set of ground rules will manage the expectations of all parties. Continually generating content, developing ideas and interacting with other community members can be time consuming, so having a Comment Policy in place will:

• Save Time
• Maintain Relevancy
• Preserve Quality
• Encourage Interaction

The goal of any business blog is to develop relationships with prospects and peers, so allowing readers to behave badly reflects poorly on both the commenter and the business. Personal attacks, irrelevant content and embedded links are just a few behaviors that will make any reader question the professionalism of the business in question. Lastly, it’s rare that comment signatures like “Buy Viagra” or “Hawaii Condos” are relevant to any post.

Creating a Comments Policy

Comments Policies will vary with every blog and situation; it’s up to each business to decide what’s acceptable. While requiring some thought, this should not be difficult; most blog commenting policies touch on:

• Control over Content and Comments
• Ability to Edit, Sensor, Delete Comments
• Use of Language
• Comment Spam

My experience has been that most businesses and individuals are thrilled to receive any comments at all and that they think that a formal policy would inhibit reader interaction; this is not the case. Lorelle Van Fossen in Does Your Blog Have a Comments Policy? makes the point that while a Comments Policy governs the way in which comments are handled on a blog, it is not a license to freely edit, censor or delete comments. Furthermore, it  simply makes public the rights and remedies a blog reserves to address comments that do not meet established ground rules.

Does Dinkum Have a Comments Policy?

No, we don’t. But that may change sometime soon.

For all the reasons previously mentioned, I feel that it’s something that we must consider. Our goal is to help small and medium sized businesses market their companies online; a big part of that is providing valuable, relevant content and an interactive forum where ideas can be shared. Having a Comment Policy will help us achieve this.

I will follow up this post in the near future to highlight the steps in our Comments Policy development process.

In the meantime, have you developed a comment policy for your personal or business blog? If so, how did you do it? We’d like to know…

Bill Rowland