I had a rather irritating experience trying to comment on a blog recently. A vendor/tech partner we use published a blog post with a couple interesting points. However, one of the things they were recommending in their post was something that was completely at-odds with their own technical infrastructure.
Being a kindly sort I commented on the post asking why was this one aspect mentioned as I thought it wouldn’t work on their platform. Here’s where things went south…
My comment was never published or responded to!
Sad Blake! Even worse, they approved some other comments AND removed the part of the post I had questioned! I couldn’t believe it, this was not behavior consistent with our industry. The whole point of a blog allowing comments is the transparency and public conversation that they allow.
This experience really broke my trust in this company’s blog.
How could they have responded differently?
I understand that perhaps there was some intern or marketing person that wrote the post and really didn’t clear the content past anyone who should have caught it. Editing the post to remove incorrect information is perfectly acceptable.
There are three more reasonable routes they could have taken though…
- Approved my comment and then replied to it noting that they had some incorrect info and the post has been updated.
- If they didn’t approve my comment they could have emailed me privately and thanked me for pointing the error out.
- Don’t allow comments or don’t allow them on certain posts (I don’t normally advise this)
In this story we are an ideal longtime customer of theirs, to the order of tens of thousands of dollars over our account history. We have sent a many people their way and are major brand advocates. This whole story, while minor and a trivial issue really left a bad taste in my mouth.
The moral of the story is: treat your commenters and your comment section with care. If someone called you on the phone and pointed out an error on your website you wouldn’t abruptly hang up on them and then fix it! Don’t treat your commenters that way!