Moderating comments* left on your blog is just another time-consuming task, right?

It one sense yes it is – if you get a lot of spam it can be very tedious to check comments regularly, and moderating does take time that you may want to spend doing income-producing tasks.

However, there are a number of benefits to moderating your comments rather than just accepting any your spam filter allows through. I was just reminded of this after reading a post on a high traffic blog and seeing an obvious spam comment in amongst a number of real comments – along with no replies to the commenters, the spam just made her look lazy and disinterested.

So my quick list of reasons to moderate blog comments is:

1. it gives you the opportunity to immediately reply to genuine comments and build your community
2. you look interested in the blog and its readers
3. you protect your readers from potentially dangerous links (most spam comments are about getting more links to dubious sites)
4. you will sometimes find fantastic comments accidentally treated as spam by filters
5. you can maintain the brand and tone of your comments. For example, you can keep people from using vulgar or hateful language, stop people attacking each other and accept only realistic and appropriate negative comments. You may reject comments completely or edit specific comments to suit if they contain a worthwhile message

Moderating comments is an easy task that you can do at the end of the working day or when you need a mental break, or you could outsource it to save time (but be sure to review yourself to answer comments).

Do you moderate comments or just let them go live?

* Moderating comments simply means looking at each comment and deciding if will go live on your site, or not. There is usually a comments section in your administration area where it is easy to view pending comments and deal with them as you wish.