The Savvy Entrepreneur

While running down my Google Alerts today, I noticed someone quoted me on their blog with a link back here. The appreciative entrepreneur that I am, I wanted to thank her for the reference and link, by posting a comment on her blog. Imagine my disappointment when I got to the “post a comment” section and found this message:

Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this weblog until the author has approved them.

This weblog only allows comments from registered users. To comment, please Sign In.

AAARRRGGGHHH!!!

I can’t help but think that people who don’t allow comments on their blogs are conceited. They seem to be screaming “What’s written here is the only thing that matters. I’m cramming in as many keywords as possible to boost my Google ranking. I don’t really care what you think.”

I also know there are many of you who are sending this message out unintentionally.

A few months ago, the same thing happened when I found Stephanie Chandler’s blog. I immediately resonated with her and loved her entertaining, witty, no-nonsense style — I, at once, added her to my list of favorite marketing blogs.

One post in particular inspired me, and I wanted to let her know by posting a comment. When I clicked the No Comments link (I’m thinking: “Yay! I get to be the first to comment!“) I got the same kind of message as above, saying I need to be signed in to post a comment.

“Weird,” I thought. “She says right here ‘Please feel free to post a comment or send me a message and let me know your thoughts!‘ I don’t want to register yet another account… I just want to leave a stinkin’ comment! What is this, grade school? I don’t have time for this nonsense.”

Needless to say, I was pretty upset about the whole situation. Sitting alone in my office, I grumbled words like “unprofessional,” “inconsiderate” and “how dare she?” Wasting no time, I deleted her from my favorites just as quickly as it had been added, then I closed her blog from my browser, never to be graced by my presence again.

Call me capricious… Call me a diva… Call me what you will (I blame it on raging pregnancy hormones at the time!), but I see this WAY too often.

What are you bloggers thinking? Do you really expect us to sign up for an account we may only use once? Come on! Get with the program.

I GET that blog spam is a problem (I recently installed the Akismet spam blocking plugin and celebrated my 10,000 caught spam this week!), but if you want to create a sense of community, encourage repeat readership and make your blog look like it actually gets traffic don’t make your readers jump through hoops just to post a comment (or worse, close commenting entirely), because believe me, we won’t! There a plenty of other blogs out there, just begging for our comments.

If you have a blog and want more comments, set up your settings so it’s easy for us to do so. In my WordPress settings I unchecked An administrator must approve the comment (regardless of any matches below) and checked Comment author must have a previously approved comment. That means, anyone can write a comment, but if you’re a first-time commenter, I must first approve it before it gets published. After that, any comment you leave will automatically be published on my blog.

To continue my story, I felt bad for being so critical of Stephanie’s blog and dismissing her so quickly; I sent her an email about the situation. She thanked me for letting her know (she didn’t know) and she changed her blog settings. Now she’s back on my list of favorites.

So what do you think — do I contact the guilty party (the blogger at the outset, who, by the way, brands herself as an online marketing expert) or do I let her learn the hard way (or perhaps she’ll get that I’m referring to her when she reads this)?

credit loan adverse unsecuredloans livestock agricultureabbey loan375000 payment loanamerican consolidation debt loansauto loan amcorequestions loan 401k303k loan Map