The negative comment!

You know what I’m talking about. What a nightmare. You post something you really care about, and that you put spent some time thinking about, and someone shuts you down. It hurts! Well, it hurts me. But the fact is that no blogger can survive without them.

Don't Worry! The negative comment isn't out to get you.

More often than not, negative comments spur more interesting conversation. If you’ve written something provocative, something that you think will not only appeal to your audience but that will get them thinking in a new way, negative comments are testament that you’ve done it right! An interesting blog post will usually get an array of reactions.

The trick is, though, dealing with the negative comment properly.

For this I turn to Charlie Four Whisky’s blog on business communication (which, by the way, is great). He wrote about this very topic in his post A Corporate Blogger’s Worst Nightmare: Negative Comments and How to Handle Them.

I completely agree that negative comments provide a worthy invitation for conversation on your blog. A mature response, perhaps clarifying your position and taking the opportunity to get into the finer points of your opinion, can be helpful not only in response to your negative commenter, but also your general reading community.

He also reminds us that we can’t control what others think of us. Why would we want to? You couldn’t be you anymore if you let other’s opinions dictate your beliefs and actions. Negative comments are sometimes inevitable: not everyone will agree with you.

What do you think about the almighty negative comment? Friend, or foe?

PS. I invite you to check out Whisky’s post linked above. Its swing on this topic is geared towards corporate identity, and is definitely an interesting/useful read.

I got the idea from Chris Brogan’s blog post A Crash Course in Comments. Chris draws attention to the ways in which comments act like currency online: they are the central component of blogging conversation and community building. He provides tips both for commenters themselves, as well as for bloggers who are interested in generating discussion out of their daily content. This was especially interesting for me, as I am always trying to make the connection between what is interesting to me and what I think might be interesting to our readers.

I think one of the most important tips he provides is that bloggers need to consider how their content might relate to their target readership’s daily lives. At Plainpeak, the emphasis is always on Growing Smart, so I push myself to constantly expand my understanding of what business is and can be I am interested in sharing these experiences with you, but moreso in hearing what you have to say so that my own business practices can improve. That’s the beauty of blogging, I get as much as I give.

What do you think about comments? What makes you want to comment on someone’s blog post? Is there a commenting etiquette that you think Chris Brogan missed out on?

In the meantime, speaking of good blogging practices, I recommend Brogan’s blog to anyone. Its straight up smart.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/