Create A Clear Comment Policy for Your Blog

One of the first steps that you should take as a blogger is to create a blog comment policy. The importance of this became apparent to me early on when I saw some of the horrible comments that some bloggers and freelance writers have heaped upon them.

Luckily, I haven’t been subjected to anything other than the very rare nut job on my sites. But, if I am ever faced with a crazy troll, I will have a good comment policy in place to fall back on for quick removal.

If you are like most bloggers, you want your blog to do educate, inspire, and help others without you or your viewers being attacked by trolls or other forms of nasty comments. This is why it is a good idea to create a comment policy. 

Although I can’t be sure, I am of the belief that the biggest reason why I have been able to avoid troll comments is simply that I have that policy in place. They see it and move on to spread their hate someplace else.

Why Comments are Good for Your Blog

So, why even allow comments in the first place? Well, comments are actually a good thing for your blog. 

Comments are like little nuggets of gold to a blogger, and you should really treat them as such. They help to build trust by allowing people to communicate back and forth with you and others. It also lets people know that they matter to you.

You always want your visitors to feel like they are sharing in the experience on your blog, and the best way to do that is with comments.

In addition, comments are seen as a demonstration of engagement, and that matters quite a bit to Sponsors.  

We are fast reaching a point where 1 million Instagram followers will not pull much weight with advertisers and sponsors. In fact, they are quickly coming around to the decision that 50k  engaged followers are much more profitable than one million followers who may or may not be bots. 

And how are they determining the quality of your followers? If you said “engagement” you are correct.

When Negative Comments are Good

All comments are not created equally. We all receive comments that are less than flattering but do not rise to the level of warranting removal.

It is those comments that seem to serve no purpose other than to stir up strife that we are talking about. On a blog, these sort of comments can create an atmosphere that is counterproductive to what you are trying to achieve.

But, while hateful comments may be undesirable on your blog or website, you may want to overlook them on other platforms.

Comments on Social Media:

All the social media platforms take the view that the more comments you get the more likely your material is to be shown. You will want to decide on what action you take with each platform. 

Do you want to remove everything that is divisive or rude? Probably not. Those negative comments can lead to you making more money.

Remember the Miranda Sings? She turned her mean comments into viral material and cashed in on her haters.

As you can see, the crowd on Youtube can be quite ruthless. You have to decide where you want to draw the line with social media comments if you even want a line at all.

How to Write a Blog Comment Policy?

So, what to do? Well, you should always encourage comments, and try to stay as far away from censorship as possible. 

Visitors like to know that their comments are their own and won’t be tampered with. Normally, this shouldn’t be a problem. But you should be prepared for every eventuality.

If you are new to blogging, or you just don’t yet have a comment policy, take a moment to plan what action you want to take if/when you receive spam, trolling, or hate-filled comments. 

If you are about to start a blog, you are going to want to plan this out, as well. Determine what tone you want your blog to take. 

Maybe you have a political blog and need to make concessions for angry and passionate opinions. In this case, you probably are going to need a more lenient comment policy.

But if you are like most of the other bloggers out there, you want your blog to foster a sense of community.  If so, you may wish to write a comment policy that limits posts to respectful disagreements.

Things To Include in a Blog Comment Policy

• Start with a short statement on how the comments are intended to work or what you hope to achieve. Follow this with your list of unacceptable speech within comments – spam, trolls, hate speech, etc. 
• Define each form of unacceptable material. Some people may not understand what a troll is or what constitutes spam. Make it clear.
• Detail how you will handle each type of violation. Will they be deleted? Will the entire comment be removed? Will you post an edited version with a note on censorship? (i.e this comment violates our comment policy.)
• Close with a statement that reserves your rights to further edit/delete any comment and reserve the right to update the policy with or without notice.

Note – this list is just suggestions on what you may want to include in your blog’s comment policy. These are neither required nor exhaustive.

Putting Your Comment Policy In Place

Once you decide what course of action you plan to take, write up your policy. Publish it as a page and then, place a link to it somewhere near your comment’s box.

On my comment policy link, I included a small note to set the tone, and then direct them to my policy, should they feel the need to read it.

You will find that most people won’t read it, and those who do are often the ones who were about to slam you.

Typically, trolls will pass on your blog if they see that there is a policy in place. They know that they won’t be able to slip something by you, so they generally move on.

Inserting Your Comment Policy

I am going to share the code that I wrote to place my comment policy link above the comment section. Feel free to use it if you like, but keep in mind that this is a WordPress platform and my code is specific to only a Genesis theme.

NOTE – You will need to determine which hooks work for your theme if it is anything other than a Genesis child theme.

If you are using Genesis, you can place the following code in your function.php file. Remember that quotes can act wonky when copied and pasted. It is best to type those out manually before saving the changes.

//* Adds a comment policy link
add_action( 'genesis_after_comments', 'ec_comment_policy' );
function ec_comment_policy() {
	if ( is_single() && comments_open() ) {
	?>
	<div class="comment-policy-box">
		<p class="comment-policy"><small><strong>Please keep it clean. Comments that do not follow the <a href="PLACE YOUR LINK URL HERE">Comments Policy</a> may be removed.</strong></small></p>
	</div>
	<?php
	}
}

You should place the link to your comment policy page in the space indicated. If you want different text, you can make changes to those as well.

Final Thoughts…

Comments are a great way to build trust with your viewers. They like to know there is a real person on the other end, and that they are participating. You probably won’t get many negative comments, but if/when that first one comes,  don’t let it pull you down for long.

We are all human, and we all have feelings. So, a day of emotion is to be expected. You can’t always stop everyone, but with a good comment policy in place, your blog should be an enjoyable place for you and your viewers.