Moderate Blog Comments
Blog implementation—Step 3 of 4
The best blogs encourage comments and conversations with readers. One of the strongest benefits of a blog is that it gives your agency a direct line to dialogue with your customers—but it’s important to set rules and expectations before the conversations start.
A blog comment policy is an easy way to communicate how conversations should happen, outlining what’s acceptable and what’s not. Be very specific about the types of comments you’ll delete, so readers understand why their comments may not appear on the blog. And be sure to point these readers to your policy so they see your expectations.
Be prepared to handle the following types of comments:
- Irrelevant or off-topic material
- Spam
- Personal attacks or threats
- Obscene, defamatory, profane, or otherwise offensive or inappropriate language
- Product endorsements
- Personal information that identifies the commenter by name, etc.
- Comments that suggest or encourage illegal or dangerous activity
- Multiple, successive off-topic posts by a single user
- Repetitive posts copied and pasted by multiple users
Other considerations
- How should your agency keep a record of deleted comments?
- Will you allow anonymous comments, or require people to sign in to comment?
- How will your staff handle comments that are really customer support questions?
IMPORTANT: Ask your Office of General Counsel to review and clear your blog comment policy (and all other Web-related policies) before you publish them.
Sample blog comment/moderation policies
Now that you’ve determined how you will manage comments on your blog, the last step in this phase is to implement a marketing strategy.
Review all steps at a glance on the How to Blog page.
Content Lead:
Justin Herman
Page Reviewed/Updated: May 16, 2012
