I always meant to ask this question, you know, back when I had a real blog with real subscriptions and real readers and real comments (it seems so far away now), but I figure I’ll just say fuck it and ask it now because dammit, I just want to know already. So I ask you, when people leave comments on your blog how do you respond?
First and foremost, I’m pretty bad at responding period. I eventually get around to it, but it’s usually a couple of days later – though I’m working on being more timely. But I wonder, since I never go back to see if anyone has responded to my comments, is responding in the comments directly the best plan? I know that some folks tend to respond to comments via email. I think this is kind of cool, but I’m just not sure it’s the best option for me since I tend to clean our my email folders pretty regularly (but I did do it that way when a whole batch of wonderful women commented on my consideration to Incubate with LWL).
Back when I had my (here it comes again) real blog, I used a plug-in so that people had the option to be alerted when comments were left after their comment. This seemed to work for me as it was up to the reader/commenter to decide whether they wanted be part of a dialog or not so as long as I commented to their comments, I did my part. Though to be honest, it didn’t seem to necessarily change the frequency of comments come to think of it.
So I ask you, o’few readers, how do you handle your comments and dialog?
I usually just add another comment to that blog to address what people have written. Whether THEY go back and read what I wrote is a different story.
I email a response if I have the option. If not, I go leave a little comment on their blog. I never reply within the stream of comments on my blog, because it bugs me when other people do that. I don’t like having to search through the comments to see if I got a response at all. Especially on bigger blogs, when there are 50-60 comments per post.
Hi. Just wandered over here from Thirty-Something Bloggers. I am on Blogger, so most of the time, I don’t have access to the email addresses of the people who comment on my blog. I don’t have *that* many visitors and most of them see pretty quickly that I reply to comments right on my blog. I do like the feature they have now which allows you to opt for follow up comments to be emailed to you, similar to HaloScan, but I think you have to have a Blogger profile to use that option.