Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 A blog is actually the best place to go to listen to your customers. Because of the anonymity of blog comments, you will receive a lot of honest criticism. However, you will also receive a lot of people “trolling,” or trying to get a rise out of you. Your job as a blogger is to build relationships with people who are talking and commenting in good faith, while tactfully ignoring or censoring people who are there in bad faith. Ideally, you will be able to weed out the trolls and allow your customers to have positive, helpful discussions on your blog. You want your customers to feel that visiting your blog to talk to you is a positive experience. Don’t shy away from banning people A lot of beginner bloggers take the attitude that “the customer is always right.” However, even in the real world, this isn’t true. When a customer is verbally abusing you or your other customers in real life, that customer is wrong. The same is true on the internet. Personal attacks, name-calling, and any combination of conspiracy theory, racism, sexism, able-ism, or any other ism should be banned immediately. Engaging with these people just feeds their need for attention. It also makes your brand look bad for allowing and responding to all this negativity. Enforce a fun, positive space. In addition, try to discourage derailers. If a discussion on your blog goes off the rails into politics, religion, etc., make comments to suggest that the commenters return to discussing the actual blog post. Consider closing discussion on comment threads that have hopelessly derailed. You want people on your blog to be talking about your products or services. Anything else is a waste of your visitor’s time. Remember people This is actually much easier to do online than in person. When you want to respond to a commenter, search for all of his/her old comments. Try to find ways to personalize your response to show you remember their previous comments. This is just like building up relationships with customers in real life, except you get to have a perfect record of all your previous interactions. Listen More than You Talk Let your customers do your market research for you. Hear them out and encourage them to talk more. Whether you take their suggestions or not, they will like you more. Most amateur marketers think that marketing is all about selling a message. It’s not. It’s about selling an experience. Listening to your customers sells the experience of doing business with you much more than talking. Be available Most people expect a response to any message to a blogger within a day. Check your blog often and respond as quickly as you can. If you need to take a vacation, make sure that someone else is able to manage your blog while you’re away. Have Fun with It Visitors to your blog are passionate about the same things you are passionate about. Interacting with them can be a fun part of your day. Let yourself relax a little bit and enjoy spending time online with your customers. Steve is a Social Media Manager and Google AdWords Certified Individual at TechWyse, an internet marketing firm based in Toronto, Canada. TechWyse specializes in SEO, PPC and Social Media Marketing. You can read more of Steve’s writing at TechWyse.com/blog. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article originally appeared on SEO PAL Blog and has been republished with permission.Find out how to syndicate your content with B2C Author: Jay Leonard Jay is a UK-based cryptocurrency expert, specialising in fundamental analysis and medium to long term investments. Jay has a great deal of hands-on experience in analysing financial markets and performing technical analysis. Jay is currently focusing on the institutional adoption of cryptocurrency and what it means for the future of … View full profile ›More by this author:Mastercard CFO sees Growth Opportunities in CryptoMarvin Inu Trending on Twitter – Is Tamadoge Next to Pump?Hashed VC Reveals it Lost $3 billion worth of Luna in Crash