Why I turned off blog comments – again

So, I’ve had this love/hate affair going on with blog comments. If you’ve been following my blog for awhile, perhaps you’ve noticed.

Like most bloggers, I had comments on all blog posts for quite some time. Even though they became far less useful over time, I kept them on.

Then, I turned them off.

Then back on again.

Then, almost like a drunk man who keeps stumbling around in circles, I went off and turned them back off again. Only this time, no fancy blog post to commemorate the flip-flop. I just turned ’em off and moved on.

Basically, I previously turned them back on because I felt that the blog was missing some kind of “X factor” – the human factor – by not having blog comments. But, again, as time went on, it became clear to me that the impact of that x-factor didn’t justify the overhead.

Truth is, all my original reasons for shutting off comments remain:

• Blog comments have No material impact on the revenue or even how effective the blog is at achieving it’s marketing aims.

• Blog comments became a distraction to being able to give my best energy to people in my Lab Community Forum

• Blog comments became a spam haven and more time was spent deleting spam than anything meaningful

• People are on social networks anyway.

• Blog comments introduce a ton of clutter to a blog’s design that gets in the way of important calls to action

So, I hosed ’em again.

To me, this is again one of those many traditions of blogging that it is OK to question. There’s no RULE that says you have to have blog comments.

It is kind of like blog sidebars. I’ve gone back and forth on it. Most blogs have a sidebar. In the end, though, there’s no RULE that says you have to have a sidebar. Most bloggers, honestly, just clog the thing full of stupid widgets just for the sake of having the site look busy.

So, maybe it is OK to ditch the sidebar, huh?

And yes, it is totally OK to get rid of blog comments.

As I said before, when others zig, you zag.

As I said before, blog comments have nothing to do with how much money you can make from your blog. I would rather build a community that is truly engaged – and I do that inside my Lab Community. Having comment counts bloated up with people doing drive-by spammings just makes no sense at all.

Should YOU get rid of comments on your blog?

Well, depends on if you get regular blog comments from actual, engaged humans. If you have an active community, then I wouldn’t turn it off. But, most blogs get little to no comments.

Plus, it depends on your purpose. The purpose of the BMA blog isn’t necessarily to drive on-site engagement. The BMA blog is meant to be the top of a funnel. It’s main purpose is to move people further into my funnel, either by an opt-in or a sale. Everything else is a distraction.

Once people connect with me on a deeper level, I’m engaged as hell! I answer emails. I connect on Messenger. I’m in the Lab Community every day. But, those are channels which have real business meaning to them. The interaction there means something.

It’s different than a blog comment.

– David