More than the sound of one hand clapping

No device is more powerful in gaining – and maintaining – an audience than the comment fields: yours and others. People like to be heard and acknowledged. Engaging that spirit of conversation elsewhere brings readers home, via profile links and URLs. And it encourages those on your site

When a reader leaves a message on your site, respond to it promptly. A good tool here is the alert function: Blogger can issue an email for each new piece of feedback. Go to Settings --> Comments --> Comment notification email at the bottom. This page also controls who can sound off and how the comments appear (full page, pop up, embedded below post). Here too are the radio buttons for backlinks, which show other webpages linking to your post. This promotes "discussions" between blogs – a fine functionality. Bloggers with older or custom templates should look here for the install code.

Comment moderation allows you to vet reader missives before they go live. This permits an author to filter out spam, trolls and sulky exes. But it slows down the dialogue considerably, so I keep this function turned off and rely on word verification – a type of CAPTCHA – to fight spambots (this requires readers to retype distorted text before posting a comment: only humans can manage this, not automated systems).

In several years of blogging, I've only deleted a dozen or so comments, so this system suits my needs. Then again, I don't court controversy. My buddy Candace Dempsey – another Writers.com instructor – landed a book deal: Murder in Italy: The Shocking Slaying of a British Student, the Accused American Girl, and an International Scandal. Her blog coverage of the tabloid-headliner case led to death threats and entire other blogs devoted to flaming Candace. After months struggling to moderate the tempest in a teapot – almost a full-time job – she often simply turned the comments off, so she could concentrate on writing. But, happy news: a Penguin imprint will publish the nonfiction book in late April, 2010!

Nightmares like that aside, comments generally build community in a more positive fashion. Remember to leave your calling card in return with observations on others' sites. Most allow you to post a URL, which can draw traffic to your blog. The best "bait" is generally a two-to-three line note offering some relevant insight, anecdote or even a question. While everyone appreciates fan mail, it's less likely to lure fresh eyes.

Week six we'll explore more traffic generating and multimedia tricks, including links (internal and external); page rankings; search engine optimization; keywords; stunts; Technorati and other portals; blog review sites; syndication (including RSS feeds); Twitter; social networking; developing a presence in the blogosphere.

Building community – or not...

The comment field makes a blog a two-way conversation, turning it from a collection of pages into a community. You present your point of view, and people comment on it. Often this garners feedback, new ideas and constructive criticism. Other times it turns into a spigot for spam. If your blog is private or not that popular, you can probably get away without restrictions on comments. But the evil spam robots will eventually find you (often before your real audience does) and start posting comments like "Great post! Love your blog! Buy Viagra here!"

Actually, you'll be lucky if the spelling and grammar are that good...

A few options exist:

1. Turn off comments. That may be a bit extreme, but if you don't have the time to react to comments on your blog, it won't be much of a two-way conversation anyhow.
2. Limit comments to registered users. This doesn't really stop the spammers as they have accounts on all the major blogging engines. As fast as those accounts get deleted, they make a new ones. Not recommended without one of the following options.
3. Require a CAPTCHA, a Completely Automated Public Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. This is the least intrusive, most spam-deterring method available and I highly recommend it for any public blog. A CAPTCHA presents a distorted picture of several letters to the user and requires them to be identified before the comment is accepted. More complicated versions, such as reCAPTCHA, use the human interaction to do cool things like converting ancient New York Times print articles into digital format.
4. Require comment moderation. This is the best option for very popular public blogs. While the Viagra spam-bots will be deterred by a CAPTCHA, some humans are nearly as hideous. These "trolls" live to stir the pot with inflammatory or derogatory comments. Perhaps that's the kind of conversation your blog was meant to have. If not, one or more administrators will be required to approve comments before they appear on the site.

All of these options can be set by following the "Dashboard" link, followed by "Settings," then "Comments". The CAPTCHA settings is called "Show word verification for comments" on that screen. Until your blog gets so popular that your Inbox is flooded every morning, it's a good idea to add your email address to the "Comment Notification Email" box so you know when the world talks to you.