I use Disqus to moderate comments across my Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms and, along with Akismet, it has pretty much kept things in line.

But I have to say that every time I login to Disqus, I feel like a kid at Christmas. I never know what to expect.

My guess is that most of the spammy stuff is robot generated, but it still makes finding legitimate comments difficult. And sometimes, in my review, it’s hard to tell the difference between someone who has a real question or comment, and someone who just wants to generate a link back to their site selling cheap, knockoff handbags, questionable sales and marketing software, or even worse, hijacking malware.

After digging through my Disqus archive and reviewing the patterns, here are three tips for sales people to leaving comments that stand out from the spam:

Avoid Spam Grammar

I’m not a big stickler for using strict grammar rules when composing conversational comments, blog posts, sales copy, etc. Above all, your writing has to emulate your voice and engage your audience. Most of the people online don’t want to read an academic treatise, they want to be entertained, engaged and they want to buy stuff. And that means you need to talk, or write, like they talk and read—fast and off the hook! Your writing has to fit the venue and the audience, just like your public speaking.

Having said that, your comments should not look like a black hat SEO spam program stitched a bunch of phrases together. You should have some type of continuous flow to your writing style that the reader can mentally follow. If it jumps from concept to concept within the same paragraph, or sometimes the same sentence, chances are high that one of the automated systems will mark it as spam.

And if it does manage to sneak by the automated systems, the moderator will probably hold it back.

Keep Your Comment Relevant To The Blog Post

I came across a comment that addressed some of the current challenges with lead generation and marketing systems. I might have given it a second look if the original blog post had been about the sales process or generating leads online.

Instead, the post was technical in nature, reviewing email configuration. The word ‘marketing’ appeared once in the entire post, which is probably what they latched onto. Naturally, there was a link back to the commenter’s squeeze page selling their hot, new lead generation software.

When leaving comments, make sure they are relevant to the subject matter of the blog post. That means that you might have to take some time to read the post—ack!

However, if you provide new and unique insights to the original post, the moderator will gladly publish your comment.

Put Substance In Your Comment

I can’t tell you how many comments I have received that said, “Good post”, or “I really don’t know what to say other than nice job. I’ll be back often.” These comments get trashed immediately.

Why post an empty comment like this? There’s nothing of value here for anyone because it references nothing.

For those of you who feel that a minor compliment is better than no compliment, I would ask you to recall the last time someone walked up to you, gave you a pat on the back and said, “good job”. Your immediate response was probably, “For what”.

When I coach people in our human interaction programs, I encourage them to identify explicitly why they are giving the person a compliment. It adds credibility to your comment and builds trust with your audience.

What points have you looked for in separating out the spam from the real comments on your blog posts? Leave your tip below.