The ability to comment on posts within a blog is one of the ways that differentiates blogging from other forms of communications. Allowing readers to comment on your posts is a way to build up the "conversation" aspect of a blog. It’s a way of saying, "Here’s what I think … what do you think?"

Dialogue between frequent readers can build up interest in the blog within your constituency, drive readership toward your posts, and perhaps more importantly, enable those within your industry or profession to grapple with (and debate) issues of real importance to your community.

That said, not all blogs allow commenting, and not all are conducive to commenting. If you’re hosting a news-gathering type of blog, with little in the way of actual commentary, then you may not get very many comments even if you make them available. And you may find comment management becomes such a chore that you need to turn it off if the comments themselves are not adding constructively to your dialogue.

What’s comment management? Well, it’s one thing to turn comments on (something pretty much all blog software allows). But you’ll need to keep an eye on it for a number of reasons:

Comment "spam" is prevalent. Spam is not just for emails anymore. Lots of spammers clog blogs with random messages (and links to their websites, natch) with the help of automated systems. You’ll need to watch your comments and learn how to use, and take advantage of, the growing anti-spam tools being built into most blog programs.

You’re not offering free advertising space. You don’t want companies trying to reach your audience to use comment space to advertise their wares any more than you would want them to use listserves for the same reason. Keep an eye on comments so that you can delete blatant ads (and if necessary, block repeat offenders from commenting).

Remember your antitrust guidelines. Associations have special need to be mindful of antitrust law and watch comments that may violate guidelines. (You don’t want a member to post a comment asking about pricing or talking about boycotts, for example.) Set up some brief but friendly guidelines for commenting, and follow them. Try not to scare people away with harsh legal language, though.

The key component of all these thoughts, though, is "watch your comments." You’ll need to monitor comments and stay on top of them on a frequent (at least daily) basis. Most systems can be set up to send you an email when you get a new comment with the contents of the comment for easier management.

Some of you might ask, "What if someone posts a comment detrimental to our membership or (god forbid) complaining about our organization?" Well … regarding that, look for a post to come later tentatively titled "In Praise of Controversy."

And finally, feel free to comment right here! (A few of you already did, but, unfortunately, I lost your thoughts when I changed the commenting system last night. I’m trying to work around some of the limitations of the free Blogger service with some third-party services.) Disagree with me? Have a question? Heck, just click the comments link below and see how easy it is to start a discussion.

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