Tuesday 9 October 2007

Best Practice: Comments

On your blog, always - and I do mean ALWAYS - reply to comments. Not every comment in a 'conversion' of comments, but to show that you do actually read your own blog. Because if you aren't reading your blog, why do you think someone else will look at it?

In Customisation, Settings/Comments, make sure you have an email address in the Comment Notification Address box. that way, every time someone comments on your blog, you will receive an email. You can then deal with it ASAP.

Also, if you have Enable comment moderation? set to Yes, for Pete's sake, make sure you are actually, really actually, moderating your comments. Otherwise people will think that youare ignoring them if they can't see their comments on their next visit. If people stop visiting your blog, then say goodbye to readers, customers, advertisers, employers. If you don't want the pressure, just set the comments moderation to No, and delete any eejit's offensive comments. If they are from bloggers, then do report them to staff immediately (see link).

If you have left comments on people's blogs, revisit the site and check for responses.

2 comments:

Phil Richards said...

Hello Duncan

I am looking at examples of good practice to publicise in the VLE.

How about using this course as an exemplar?

Phil

Duncan said...

Hi Phil,

Which course? I've 3 listed in the sidebar, but only one (N4OG-B) is officially doing Weblogs as part of their course.

The HNC students (N3CC-E and N3CL-A) are encouraged to show their portfolio work on their blogs, in a similar way to the professional graphics artists, listed under "inspiration".

Other staff running the Weblogs (Int2/level 5)[DN81 11] course are Cameron and Nelson. Chrissie's Internet Safety class has to keep a blog as part of their subject. Links to their sites, and on to their students', can be found in the sidebar.

Duncan

Duncan