When you start to gain traction in your industry or community, you’ll start to get a lot more comments on your company blog.
The problem is, not everyone has the best intentions. Sometimes, even the best brands fall victim to social trolls, so check out our best tips for dealing with them by moderating your comments effectively.
What is a troll?
A troll (also known as internet troll) is a person who deliberately causes upset or discord on the internet by posting argumentative, insulting or off-topic comments on blogs and social media.
They do this to get a reaction out of other readers and cause havoc in the community. In their world, it’s amusing. To the rest of us, it’s not.
There’s no way to stop trolls attempting to do their worst, but with a good moderation system in place, you can prevent their comments from taking over your blog. Here are some to try!
1. Disqus
You’ve probably seen Disqus around the web as a platform for blog comments. It also has plenty of great features specifically for moderating blog comments, as well as supporting Google AMP, working on both mobile and desktop systems and even being adaptable to the aesthetic theme of your blog!
The format of Disqus makes it clear and easy to go through and moderate each comment – deleting any you’re not happy with.
2. Facebook Comments Plugin
We’re all familiar with Facebook Comments, but as a blogger, you’ll need to take advantage of additional tools. With the blog and website plugin for Facebook Comments, you can organise comments by time and engagement level as you look through and moderate the content.
You can also choose to blacklist certain words, which means comments containing those words won’t be published automatically – you’ll need to review them first.
3. IntenseDebate
IntenseDebate works on a range of platforms and encourages discussion by allowing users to directly reply to various comments, forming threads.
This makes it easier for moderators to read through each conversation and remove anything that shouldn’t be there.
In addition to moderation, another benefit is that users can subscribe to a thread they’re interested in, helping to create repeat traffic and engagement on your blog.
You can also choose to block users based on their IP address, email address, or any comments that feature a specific word or phrase.
4. LiveFyre
LiveFyre is a commenting system that includes a wide range of moderation features that you can set up in advance and leave to do their job automatically.
You can choose to moderate all comments before being published, allow comment editing, allow (or prevent) guests from commenting and display any links clearly.
You can also ban specific users from leaving comments on the blog, which is especially helpful if you know who the trolls are.
Have you ever experienced a troll on your blog? What was the worst comment they posted, and how did you deal with the problem? We can’t wait to hear your thoughts!
