OK, so I’m a little late with this item. Yesterday, we were tasked with considering this question: “should we be using the commenting capacity to generate conversations between bloggers, or should we be interacting through our blog posts?”

I wasn’t even aware of a debate over this issue until I learned about Seth Godin’s lack of comments on his blog. There was some debate over whether you could even call it a blog if you don’t allow comments. And let me say with conviction that yes, you can have a blog without allowing comments.

But on to the question at hand. I’m sure it’s obvious to most readers that I believe in promoting conversations with whatever means are available: your blog, my blog, text comments, video, whatever. So I don’t really have a preference for commenting on the original blog or taking your thoughts back to your blog and expanding the conversation there. Do what feels right.

I suppose it depends on whether you want to draw your blog’s readership into the discussion or not. It might also depend on whether you genuinely have something new to say. I’m not sure I’d write a post just for the sake of saying “Yeah, what she said.” Length of the comment might also be a factor, but I’m not sure I’d make that the primary factor in any situation. I don’t think there’s a simple prescriptive approach to making the “correct” decision. I wouldn’t obsess about it either way. Again, do what feels right.

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