As you begin blog marketing, you will receive comments from your readers. After all, many times the most interesting content comes from the comments. Some comments will be relevant and helpful while others will be plain junk. Establishing guidelines will help keep your blog free of comment spam and inappropriate language.

Setting up guidelines on how you will respond and what types of comments are acceptable will make decisions easier. Here is an example of a comment policy that you are free to use or modify:

Comment Policy
We welcome your comments to our blog. To keep our blog focused and to protect you and other users of the site, we have set some comment guidelines.

1. This Blog is moderated and comments submitted will be reviewed before being posted. We reserve the right to edit or delete comments.
2. Comment spam will be immediately deleted. This includes comments that are focused on selling a product or service or are not relevant to the posting. We do not allow marketing messages of any kind.
3. Please keep your comments brief and on topic. Comments longer than 1-2 paragraphs make the blog difficult to use. We reserve the right to edit to make comments concise and clear. We will exclude comments not related to the subject.
4. Relevant links that point to your own or someone else’s site that is relevant to the topic is encouraged. Comments with a link in it that has no relevance to the blog posting will be deleted.
5. Please refrain from personal attacks or being disrespectful of others. Do not use profanities or other offensive or objectionable words. Comments may be deleted or edited that include such language.
6. Please post only your own work and do not post words or materials that were taken from somewher else. Do not infringe on the copyright rights of others.
7. Please respect people’s privacy. Do not share anyone’s address, place of employment, telephone number or email address.
8. Comments that appear to violate laws that govern use of copyrights, trade secrets, etc, will be deleted. We reserve the right not to publish allegations, conspiracy theories and other information which we know to be false or unsubstantiated.
9. If you are under 18, please get a parent’s or guardian’s permission before posting any comments.

Comment guidelines make blogging, moderating comments and responding easier on yourself and your readers. There are no surprises and all parties know what to expect. The tone and wording of a comment policy should match your blog.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 4:47 am and is filed under Blog Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.