User Comments: How To Efficiently Handle These on Your Blog?

We all want to hear some appreciation for the work we do. It doesn’t matter what field we belong to, every work requires some acknowledgment, healthy criticism and proper appreciation. If you are a writer or a blogger, you must understand that not everyone is going to like what your write. Similarly if you are a designer, not everyone is going to like what you design. This means that you will be getting both negative and positive user comments for your work. As a professional, it is very important for you to keep things professional and handle them professionally. You need to have a very correct approach towards comments of users.

To say the truth, almost every comment deserves your attention and if you decide to ignore comments if you have huge business anyway, you have opted for a wrong strategy. It does not matter if you have a small, huge business; you need to cater to your audience in order to make it successful. Feedback or comments can prove to be really valuable for your product. In fact it can be a great marketing strategy so give these comments what they deserve and ignoring them is certainly not among this. As mentioned earlier, you need to deal with them professionally so let us take a look how:

Focus On Important Comments :

Now, as I said, comments are really important but not all comments should be addressed. Some people will bad mouth your product just because they are having a bad day so no need to take them seriously. Apart from this you might get a lot of spam comments as well so beware of spammers. One thing which is a must for you to do is using anti-spam plug-in.

This is a great way to filter out spam comments and you will be left with only important comments so you will be able to focus on what is important. If you won’t, you will get loads of spam comments and it is nothing but wastage of time.

Get Control :

You should have the full control over the comments and not every comment should be posted on website. Keep a check on comments and always approve them manually. However, if you decide to approve them manually, you need to do if quick and real fast. If a user gets to see his comment after a week and that too when the whole ongoing discussion has ended, he will never ever post a comment again on your website.

If visitors will start thinking like this, obviously you are not dealing with the comments professionally. So, do it yourself but do it real fast so that you do not end up disappointing users.

Keep Things Simple :

The entire procedure of posting comments should be easy and flexible. The more complicated you make it, the less comments you will get. Obviously, to avoid spam comments you will be having security checks but make sure they are working fine and these security checks should not block the regular comments. If a user has to go through millions of steps to post a comment, chances are that he will leave and would never visit your site again to leave comments.

Always Answer To Questions :

As a professional, it is your duty to act responsible. While commenting there will be a lot of users who would be asking questions to you in order to get things clear. Never ever ignore the questions and answer every user individually. You may come across some extremely silly questions too but as a professional you will have to answer them too.

You can be precise in answers but ignoring them is definitely not an option for you. Leaving a question unanswered means you are ignoring your customer which is not at all an acceptable thing in professional world.

Write For People and Not For Yourself :

Not everyone visiting your website or blog would be highly educated so you need to keep things simple. Whenever you write something or reply to something, try to keep language as simple as possible. You might have an outstanding vocabulary but not everyone does so don’t force your visitors to open a dictionary in order to be able to understand your reply. Use plain and layman language but nice sentences.

Be Friendly and Open Minded :

Do not appear as some monstrous admin. In order for people to be able to talk to you or relate to you, you need to come across as a friendly blogger or webmaster. While replying to comments, keep your tone simple and friendly. You can even use your sense of humor while having an interaction with your visitors. This will not only please the readers but they will also develop a comfort level with you. Once readers develop a comfort level they will become a regular visitor of your website which will prove to be really good for you.

Inform Your Users :

If you are approving comments manually, you need to inform your users that they are pending approval. Leaving them with no message means you are leaving them blank completely. If you will have no comment after they press the submit button, they will keep on wondering what happened to their comment which is not good. They should know it is pending approval and will appear on website once approved.

Deal With Issue Not the Person :

As I said, not everyone is going to like so you will definitely get negative comments. Now, a few should be ignored but some use comments deserve a reply. Some people will attack you personally as well but as a professional you need to deal with the issue and not the person. If you will start attacking them personally it will only worsen the situation and other readers will also judge you. Do reply to them but in a professional way.

Crowd of User Comments – Filter out the Pointless Ones :

Do not take all negative user comments personally because if someone is upset with what you have written, there could be a reason. Try understanding the reason and see if they actually have a point in their negative user comments. Maybe you have written something wrong or maybe they have misunderstood something. If you are wrong, there is nothing wrong in admitting it. In fact, if you will humbly accept that you were wrong, people will respect you more.

Be Understanding :

You do not have to agree with your visitors but you have to come across as someone who quite understands. Even if they are talking uselessly, you have to be patient and reply to them positively. DO not let yourself become a victim of their negativity. If a lot negative is being said about you, probably you need to stay quite and let the storm pass away. Too much of useless negativity online does not deserve your attention.

Final Thoughts :

You must have heard of a very famous phrase ‘if you are willing to dish it then you should be willing to take it.’ So, if you are writing something, you should be able to accept the feedback as well. If you are posting things online, anyone can access your content from all over the world so be professional, keep it simple and positive.

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