Why most bloggers should blog on Google+.

Why most bloggers should blog on Google+.

Xark blogger Daniel Conover wrote a piece Friday about why he's turning off comments on his blog: 

http://xark.typepad.com/my_weblog/2013/01/why-i-shut-down-comments.html

He tells the same sad story that I've seen dozens of prominent bloggers write: Trolls, haters and spambots have taken over their comments, and so they're going to stop allowing people to comment. Blog comments, he writes, turn into "troll ghettos."

To me, a blog without comments is like a school without students or a concert without an audience. To me, engagement and interactivity with readers is a fundamental attribution of blogging, and really its main benefit for the blogger. 

Dan reveals in his post that he's very close to the Google+ epiphany, but doesn't quite get there. He writes: 

1. "The quality of your comments is really a reflection of your online community, not the snazziness of your comment control dashboard."

2. "Regular people left blogging for social media platforms that far better suited their purposes." 

3. He posts to Facebook and Twitter where people comment, but he can follow those "not as fully as I can via on-post comments."

The solution to his problem couldn't be more obvious: Blog on Google+. 

On Google+, you end up with super high-quality comments, and you don't even need a "comment control dashboard." You go where the people are. And you can have your cake and eat it, too: You can have comments on the post itself, and still have viral social sharing. 

User accounts are less likely to be anonymous or false. It's easy to block trolls and haters. The community is fantastic. And just like a blog, public posts are just pages on the open Internet.