A Brief Guide To Leaving Comments

byGordonBombay

403 followers

6 years ago

The last few weeks, I have experienced a fair deal of frustration when it comes the quality of comments that I have been receiving on my site from Wealth Affiliate members.

I have read several posts from others regarding similar frustrations so I know that I am not the only one feeling this way.

There seems to be a few different schools of thought when it comes to leaving comments, which I understand.

While I use both the site comments platform and the comment page to solicit comments, most of the poor quality comments have been through the site comments platform.

I get it. Everyone wants to just go on there and bang a few comments out so they can get some credits to get comments on their own site.

The thing is that it's not very difficult to leave a quality comment. Most posts are quite short and do not require much of your time to go through.

It's evident that a fair amount of people are in a huge rush to leave comments on the site comments platform.

They do not double-check the comment they wrote for spelling, grammar or relevancy.

One school of thought that I think is contributing to this is what I call the "just edit it" school. I have seen people on here say that you should never disapprove a comment you get because you have the option to edit it.

I entirely disagree. I am not talking about minor things like spelling a word wrong or leaving a period out. That can easily be fixed.

What I am talking about are the comments I get that make zero sense at all. Almost every time I submit a page for comments, I get at least one that makes zero sense.

I understand that there are a lot of people on here in which English is not their first language. At the same time, you cannot expect someone to rewrite your comments at every turn.

If I have to literally rewrite the whole comment to make sense (yes it happens), it's taking time away from other things I could be doing on my blog.

For the people that say it only takes a minute to rewrite, that's not the point. It's the principle behind it.

You should treat other WA members blogs as you would your own blog. You wouldn't go on your own blog and write a poor-quality comment that made zero sense.

When I get a comment like that, my first thought is that the commenter does not care enough to take the extra minute to reread their comment.

While we all do this individually, we are also on a team of sorts and are supposed to be helping each other out.

I think a lot of these comments are coming from people who are fairly new here so I am just going to give some helpful tips based upon real examples of comments I've received.

This is not to be negative and critical even it appears that way. It's meant to help people who may not understand why their comments keep getting declined.

When it comes to leaving comments:

• Get my name completely wrong.
• Leave a comment about something that has nothing to do with the actual post.
• Ask questions in the comment that you have seen answered in the post if you actually took the time to read it.
• Leave comments about the site itself such as "great design, great theme, I like the organization of your site" etc. I get these a lot and while I appreciate it, I don't think site comments is the appropriate space for it. You have to get away from the fact that you are a fellow blogger leaving comments. I understand we look at each others sites from a different perspective, but a normal person isn't going to go onto your site and leave comments about the design and theme.
• Say you have zero interest in the topic. If that's the case, there's a skip option for the post.
• Ask questions just to ask questions. Legitimate questions are fine but ending every post with 4 different questions is overkill.
• Write in incomplete sentences. You should write your comments like you are writing a post on your blog. With the same care and diligence.
• Try to argue with me in your comment.

Do

• Proofread every comment you write.
• Use a quality translator if English isn't your first language.
• Leave a comment that is relevant to the post.
• Leave a comment that is longer than one sentence.
• Write comments in complete sentences.
• Show interest in the topic if you are leaving a comment.
• Write every comment like it is one that will be appearing on your own site.

I honestly am attempting to be helpful with this post and I know that I am not the only one that has been feeling the same frustrations.

Leaving comments is not difficult. It takes a few minutes. It takes an extra minute, if that, to read it over quick to make sure it makes sense.

If you are having trouble with your comments getting denied, I guarantee you are doing one or several of the above listed things.

Rushing through site comments leaving as many as possible without caring if they are quality ones is selfish.

With each comment you should ask yourself "is this something I would want someone to leave on my post?'

If everyone did this, I think that there would be very few issues with the type of comments received.

Whether you agree or disagree with me, I'd love to hear below. I think a discussion on this can benefit everyone.