Negative blog comments, or negative comments anywhere on the Web, typically freak people out to a certain degree. If you’re an avid blogger you’re going to get them, no doubt about it.
Dealing with Negative Comments
First and foremost, you can’t hide from negative comments. It’s important to let them surface [unless they are over the line – judgment call] because they might lead towards an improvement, but they also send the message that you are open to constructive criticism. Letting negative comments to be visible is one thing, but how you respond is a whole different issue.
This is where it gets tricky.
From past experience, if you respond to a person’s negative comment it’s almost guaranteed that they will respond to your response. This is where you could find yourself in a back and forth that a) takes up a lot of time and b) gets you off your message.
And I don’t care who you are, if you don’t plan for this you’re going to find yourself in trouble. Trust me, it’s happened to me. The negative comments that correspond directly to a specific blog post are the easy ones to handle; primarily because you can typically support your writing, admit a mistake or respectfully disagree.
The comments that can be problematic are the ones that come from left field and are more attacking in nature. For this type of situation I think it’s good to respond, but if they respond back with more attacks you invite the person to contact you offline or state that you are only going to approve and respond to comments pertaining to the original post [speaking in terms of blogs].*
That might seem like an evasive action, but the back and forth is a really bad idea. Imagine if someone comes to your blog for the first time and they see this person going off on a tangent – no matter if they are right or wrong it doesn’t look good.
Being open and allowing disagreement is important, but you don’t have to allow yourself to be abused by someone that isn’t offering constructive criticism or advice.
* If you want to continue to let the negative comments to post you can, but at a minimum make it very clear that you will no longer be responding to the individual.
