Wednesday, December 17, 2008

How Do You Respond To Comments?

When I first started blogging no one commented but eventually, the comments came. Sometimes I wanted to say more in response to their comments, other times I simply wanted to acknowledge the person and their response. This presented a dilemma.

Where should I post my response? Should I post it on my blog along with their comment? Should I go to their blog, comment on their current blog, then put my response to their comment on my blog over there? Con -- fusing is the best way to describe the feeling.

It didn't throw me into fits or cause me any wasted brainpower trying to make sense of it. I filed in in the back of my mind and forgot about whether one way was better than another for responding to comments.

I followed my simple plan of posting my response on my own blog along with their comments. Occasionally, I would thank the person for their comments on their blogs. I also wrote a blog post suggesting that we go back to review older posts in case someone posted a comment days or even months after our original blog post.

I recently found an interesting article with helpful suggestions on how to handle responses to comments.

Building A Better Blog For 2007: Respond To Comments

  • Don’t delete negative comments unless they’re actually demeaning to the readership in general.
  • Respond to both positive and negative comments.
  • If the message was in the form of a comment, reply on the site and also make sure to send an email.

READ MORE at: The Simple Dollar.

3 comments:

  1. i've had the same question...and since we don't have the email addresses of most of our commentors, it's difficult to contact them and not everyone marks email follow=up comments to your own home address because you'd get too much. so the dilemma continues. will check out your links. thanks.

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  2. I've thought a lot about this as well... I enjoy reading when a blog author responds to his/her comments. But, I don't think a lot of readers go back and re-read a site after their initial comment. Am I wrong? I feel sort of rude sometimes when I'm asked a question and I don't answer it.
    hhmmmmm... what to do, eh?

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  3. It's my feeling that most people don't go back to the post to see if the author has responded although there's been times when I have... more often not though.

    Therefore, I do try to go to the Post profile and see if they have an e-mail where you can send them a personal message. I've actually only started doing this. I didn't know you could.

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