Good Blog Comments Get Good Advertisers

The commenters on your blog is something your advertisers will evaluate when choosing to buy advertising placements from you.

Where comments tend to consist mostly of bashing, cursing, flaming, advertisers are not going to do business with you. Advertisers don't want their products and services associated with immature commenters.

All of us publishers start out small, and we start out monetizing our traffic with marketing networks like Google AdSense, Commission Junction, ValueClick, et al, where the publisher does not have to interface with another human being.

As a result, we tend to get lazy in building a quality audience base. We allow childish comments to get through. We want to welcome constructive criticism, but end up allowing plain old bashing. Because we don't talk person-to-person with advertisers, we lose sight of protecting their best interests.

But when your traffic increases significantly, assuming it remains targeted to a specific demographic, you'll fetch direct communication from interested advertisers. At that point, you'll make that jump from advertising networks to direct advertising sales, and will have to manage business relationships with actual human beings. That's where you make the bigger bucks.

But you won't get those calls if you don't build a mature, intelligent community.

Five years ago, I posted an article here entitled "One True Asset of a Blog", explaining its the "community" surrounding your blog that defines it's actual value. It's the commenters, the subscribers to your feed, your Facebook Page and Twitter followers, the other bloggers who reblog your posts, that make up the power of viral marketing.

Advertisers eventually take note of that community and desire to associate their products and services with it.

But viral marketing can be a double-edged sword.

So you have to straighten up your blog. Take control of the commenters, moderate everything, and do not auto-post comments. You don't need 100+ comments or 100+ retweets on each article to convince an advertiser that you have the audience they desire. Advertisers will already know by following your blog first before doing business with you.

Identify your best commenters and keep those folks around. When they comment, build relationships with them by responding to them with comments of your own.  ✓