A Crucial Step To Building A Blog Community

Blogs can be the very best of the Web 2.0 community experience and the most fundamental part of this experience are blog comments. Interaction is key for a lot of reasons, the least not being instilling the feeling of contribution.

People want to respond to something that peaks their interest. They want to agree and say so, or they want to expand on what they saw, heard, felt, or read. Maybe they want to present a different view. What ever their response, the fact that they can respond give a sense of belonging.

There are other reasons visitors like to comment at other blogs and one is to mildly advertise that they too own a blog. This is one of the ways to build a community around their own blogs.Some other person who leaves a comment, or maybe even the blog’s author, might drop in at a blogger’s place because they left a link in the comments section.

This happens, and I know it from a personal experience.

The first example is provided by my close  friend Michey, of Crabbysbeach’s  Squid What? blog, who told me how excited she was when she first saw the Comment Luv on a blog. She said that she ended up at several blogs that day just by playing tag from one comment box to the next. She was at blogs she had never been to and she tweeted every one of them.

The second example is from my own experience. I made a comment at an A-List blog, and the next thing I know I had a visitor from a B-List blogger at my newest blog. I visited his blog and found a really cool blog that I subscribe to now. Oh yeah, he is a subscriber to mine as well and every time I have posted since, he shows up to comment.

In all honesty, I can only think of two reasons why a blogger wouldn’t put a comment box on their blog. One is if the blog is actually a store front. In that case, a testimonial page is more appropriate.

The other reason is if the blogger is a pompous ass who is a self appointed ass.

Why would you not allow people to comment? I have seen many grand discussions in comment boxes and this can do nothing but great things for building and sustaining a community.

I welcome ALL comments, and always will. I think not allowing any comments is sacrilege to the art of blogging and am so ingrained in that thought that tomorrow morning I am going to un-follow a popular blog because the blogger doesn’t allow comments.

What are your thoughts about blog comments?