Through the Internet and social media, businesses have been able to connect with their target audience like never before.

Blogs are now one of the most effective ways to build a connection with an audience and tell a brand’s story.

Traditional marketing was focused on one-way communication and was marketer-centric. Inbound marketing is two-way and customer-centric.

One of the places that allow for a two-way dialogue to occur is the comment sections on websites and some social media sites.

But with that ability to connect, spammers and obscene commenters can make a comment section an offensive environment, which could go as far as detracting from a brand’s reputation.

After all, a brand isn’t just your logo, colors and tone. It is also how people perceive you.

No Comment(s)

At the end of the day, it might not be worth the time and effort to moderate spam and offensive comments.

Going this route means the business will lose out on the chance to build a community. But options exist such as taking comments of a website and keeping them relegated to a company Facebook page.

A business has to decide if the resources that go into keeping a comments section is worth the return from having them.

Keeping the Comments

There is no easy cookie-cutter way to go about deciding whether you should keep comments open and moderate or get rid of them completely.

Every business will have different reasons for deciding either way.

Some will value interaction on their website more than others.

Big or small, it doesn’t matter. There is tremendous value in building an interactive community.

Some companies require people to sign into Facebook in order to comment, removing the anonymous commenters. The flip side is some people don’t want to have to sign up for Facebook and may complain.

In the end, businesses have to analyze the purpose of having comments to make the decision that’s right for them.

Is the purpose of commenting to encourage a community that fits in with the organization’s brand? If so, then keeping a commenting system is a must.

But if the purpose of comments is to drive engagement back to a website, then keeping comments to social media might be the best fit.