I like comments. I hate comments. I have a weird relationship with comments. I admit the weirdness. I do. I like leaving long comments on guest posts but hate leaving comments on my blog. Hey I am weird. I have strange blocks. I feel uber appreciative to receive comments but view responding as a waste because I could be creating a blog post which brings in more traffic and helps more people. This view sounds short-sighted for most engaging bloggers. I admit it; I have this weird thing about commenting but I also know my time needs to be well spent if I wish to prosper with my online business. If I do not act effectively I am pretty much doomed. I know, I know.
I can act smart or act stupid. The decision is always mine. I have 2 distinct reasons why comments can kill your business.
1 - You Waste Time Responding
I imagine Seth Godin. Marketing genius he is, and I believe he closes comments on his posts for good reason. He became a marketing genius by focusing on marketing and not responding to comments. Any genius works on a skill, practicing for 10s of thousands of hours until their genius developed. You cannot work for that long if you spend precious hours responding to comments. Even if you spend 20 minutes responding to blogging comments you are doomed guys because writing comments, or responding comments, takes away from the time you could be using to create on your own blog. Stop responding. Take the energy and devote to a new blog post to grow your online business.
2 - You Worry About Them
If you worry you kill online business growth. I kid you not I was at the beach in Costa Rica today and actually thought about whether I should wait so late each day to respond to comments, instead of enjoying the moment so I can feel good then attract business growing ideas. Online business lesson learned in a big ole' way. I let go worry. I swam. I caught some sun. I came home and wrote for like 6 hours. I am happy because I stuck to the plan today. No business-sapping worry about comments, I created new posts like a machine and put off my commenting strategy until late in the day.
Do you kill your biz by commenting?
