Great Blog Post But Bad Commenting Ecosystem

This is simply not just a pet peeve of mine but a major faux pas. I look upon the commenting ecosystem of any blog -- especially a commercial blog -- as the foundation of building a community.

There are a number of excellent commenting systems to choose from -- Intense Debate and Disqus -- come to mind. I have a special affinity towards Disqus and use it on my commercial blogs. These systems each have their pros and cons but they provide an excellent avenue to create and extend the conversation beyond the initial post.

There is very little value in having a blog and creating exceptional content to then have a poor commenting system or worse no commenting system at all. The conversation builds communities -- communities are the heart of social media.

I have been to dozens of blogs this week and the majority of these sites -- both commercial and personal -- simply use the standard commenting system. Painfully, many of these systems offer no avenue to extend the conversation beyond the post. This is a massive mistake. By not allowing the conversation to extend beyond the blog you severely hamper your opportunity to connect with others that are like minded. You remove the opportunity to share information and that is so crucially important.

The commenting ecosystem must include outside social networks like Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. If you are not building communities -- if you are not thinking about sharing information -- then you are not only doing yourself a disservice but you are doing your brand an injustice.