I like to leave comments on articles and blog posts I find interesting, and interact with the author. However, if the only option to leave a comment is through Facebook comments, I probably won’t use it for the following reasons:

My professional persona is separate from my personal persona. I don’t want my friends and family reading my comments on “How To Make A Two-Sided Business, One-Sided”. It’s not relevant for them, and I’d like to keep my feed clean of those messages.

Sure a giant company like Salesforce talks about customer focus, but I don’t want people I interact with for business / professional reasons to view or connect to my Facebook profile. I have a linkedIn profile for those purposes.

I have no idea if the author is notified when I post using Facebook comments. One of the main reasons I comment on an article is to start a conversation with the author on the subject. If I can’t tell if he’s even notified, I probably won’t bother.

I understand why people think adding Facebook comments will help drive traffic to their site. Perhaps in some contexts it makes sense, but if you were wondering why no one is commenting on your articles, consider if better engaging your readers is more important to you than polluting their social feed. Also – visitors might not even have a Facebook account, or they are not logged-in at the moment. Don’t make this a barrier for engagement.

If people do feel they want to share your article on Facebook, use social sharing buttons, like the ones you see on this blog. Don’t force commenting and sharing as a bundle package to readers.

Edit:

After reading and responding to the comments below, I understand it was not completely clear what my stance is. First, I’d like to make it clear I have nothing against Facebook, or its comment widget. I was questioning the appropriateness of having the comment widget on sites / blogs where I read for professional reasons, and would like to keep it separate from my personal Facebook profile.

Keep it separate doesn’t mean just that my friends on Facebook will read it, but also whether other readers of the blog will have access to my Facebook profile, which I’d rather avoid.

In addition, I was writing the post from the viewpoint of a site visitor who’s been frustrated by having no recourse other than using Facebook comments – not from the viewpoint of the publisher. Content publishers have their own objectives which might not align with mine, and it might be perfectly fine with them that I don’t leave a comment on their site. There’s nothing wrong with that.

To sum it up – if you care about people who want a separation between their Facebook profiles and their professional reading, you should think twice about using Facebook comments in your site.

To know when the next article is published, please subscribe to new articles using your Email below or follow me on Twitter.