About a year ago, I wrote a post on a hobby blog of mine about a particular recipe, which didn’t go down well with a certain group of animal lovers (and no, it wasn’t a rare or unusual species of animal!). I’ve since taken down the blog, but not because of the post, so can no longer link to it. It was the first time I had ever received a critical comment on a blog post I’d written.

When I first saw these comments I panicked a bit, was really annoyed and my first reaction was to delete them all, but then, that’s the whole point of a blog – that people can comment on what you’ve written. That’s why businesses need to blog, not only to keep customers and staff informed as to what’s going on, but to create a discussion and welcome comments back from the public, good and bad.

So what should you do when you get very critical comments on your own blog?

Well from my past experience and from what I’ve read, it’s probably best to do just what I did. I would keep those comments up on your blog (unless they’re rude or insulting), and let visitors to your blog decide for themselves who’s right or wrong. I also believe that it’s important to reply back – there’s no point in trying to pick arguments as chances are those who wrote the comments aren’t likely to listen to your point of view anyway. Just an acknowledgement may be enough, but do say something in response rather than nothing at all.

The other thing is not to let these kind of comments get to you. I was really annoyed about it at the time, but the problem with blogging and being online is that it can get a bit messy from time to time and that’s all part of being on the web and participating. It will blow over and don’t let it stop you from continuing with your blog! If you don’t want to get comments like this, then you have to be careful about subject matter, but from my point of view, what I thought was an innocent blog post obviously wasn’t and there are so many people out there who have nothing better to do than pick about trivial things. You’ve probably seen similar behaviour if you’ve ever visited forums and some of the social media sites.

So if you do ever get criticism on your blog, just carry on & don’t let it get to you! The web is full of people who like to make sarcastic comments and most of the time these type of comments have little substance to them.