Blog Writing: How to Avoid Negative Comments

Denise posted this week over at Build a Better Blog about negative comments. It's amazing how many professionals express this fear. I'm reminded of the old Hollywood press agents' response about "any press is good as long as they spell your name right."

Of course, if you really want to avoid people saying anything negative about you or your business, all you need to be is bland. Or try to be perfect. Or never express a strong opinion. In other words, be boring.

On the other hand, if you want readers to pay attention to what you have to say, write with passion and purpose: be strong.  Take a risk and say something controversial.

Yesterday I expressed doubt about the effectiveness of email newsletters in today's email environment, yet nobody responded.

So what? I probably don't get hordes of vociferous commenters to this blog anyway, but that doesn't stop me from making a strong statement that has many sides to it.

Lord knows, I love ezines and have built a business providing customized newsletters for consultants. I don't want them to stop. But if blogging or white papers are more effective, then I want to be among the first to announce it.

Our business blogging clients often complain about lack of comments to their blogs, and I say: "When's the last time you came out with a bold statement and dared readers to disagree or take a side?"

If you're afraid of negative comments, then maybe you shouldn't be blogging. Try to find a place where you can hang out and be perfect, or bland, or boring.

Here's an excerpt from an excellent post I found on How to Avoid Negative Comments by British blogger Mark White:

From a company perspective:

Be mediocre - successful companies appear to polarise opinion and will always generate some negative feelings as well as all the positive ones. Just look at Microsoft and Google. To avoid encouraging negative sentiments which might then be expressed on your blog, avoid success like the plague and concentrate on remaining steadfastly average.

Supply faultless products - ensuring that your products never fail or break will cover you against any possible negative comments that might come from customers who expect that when they buy a product, it should work for life. Their life, that is … not the product’s.

Provide perfect service - we’re talking here about not only customers but suppliers, partners and staff too. This should make certain that people don’t need to resort to using your blog to ask service or support questions - in fact, hopefully they won’t really need to contact you at all or clog up your nice call centres.

From a blog perspective:

Avoid expressing an opinion - there is nothing worse than opinions to get people’s backs up and there’s also a high risk that someone, somewhere will disagree with them. You may find that sharing information carries these same risks as it opens the door for dialog and discussion.

Make your posts as bland as possible - by reporting little of relevance or interest in your blog, you will successfully be reducing the number of people reading it. An added bonus is that nobody is likely to make the effort to engage in conversation by posting comments, positive or negative. Longer-term strategy but still very effective.

Hide your blog - let’s face it, if people can’t find your blog then they are unlikely to react negatively to anything in it. This can either be done actively or passively: actively should involve regularly changing permalinks to break those unwanted inbound links, while passively you can simply sit back and steadfastly refuse to admit that the blog exists.

Comments

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Patsi;

I have found that the bigger the audience the more likely you will have negative comments.

When I first began blogger for Copyblogger.com, I had a "ton" of negative comments because I was saying things that were controversial.

Just my random thoughts!

Nice to see you have a white paper now Patsi!

Mike

[Andrea Glass]

I'm a newbie to blogging, but I still can't see how it is better than ezines. Ezines are delivered right to the email box of your target audience who signed up to receive your monthly brilliance. Blogs are just out there and who knows who will stumble upon them. How could you guarantee your target audience will find you amid the blog jungle? Until I unravel that mystery, I'll keep writing ezines.

[Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad]

It's hard to compare, really, since they are so different; but some professionals find it hard to do both and we are often asked which they should do if they only have time for one.

My answer is a blog for the reasons you mention: you never know who will stumble upon it, and your message will be read by the people on your ezine list AND others who find you because they're searching for the same keywords you're blogging about.

Andrea, your ezine is delivered (maybe) but it isn't always opened. In fact most open rates are 25-40%. So up to 60% of people on your list don't read what you have to say.

If you're saying it on a blog, however, anybody can read it, even people you don't know you yet and who aren't on your list yet.

Search engines love blogs, so if you have a clearly defined message and audience, they should be able to find you if you're posting frequently. People can't find your ezine though...I'll bet.

[Andrea Glass]

I see what you're saying. I just enjoy reading ezines and rarely read blogs. Ezines come to my email box so I don't have to go looking for them. I'm still learning how to get people to my blog, but after several months of blogging I don't think many are finding me. I've had only 2 comments and I have no idea if anyone else has visited my blog. My intern is posting about 2 posts/week, but I've had no one contact me about any offers on my blog or website. I'll keep reading the Blog Squad wisdom to find out more about how blogs work. As a writer, writing posts is a slam dunk. The question is how will I get people to my blog?

[Ann]

It was quite useful reading, found some interesting details about this topic. Thanks.