I Do Respond To Comments!
Oct 4th, 2008 by Doug Berch
I’ve had this blog going for about a year and still consider myself somewhat new to the process.
A friend who regularly leaves comments did not realize that I almost always respond because she doesn’t go back to my posts to check.
She sends an email as a response to comments on her blog and I respond via the blog itself unless a lengthy or more personal response is in order.
Is there an appropriate “netiquette” for doing this? If anyone knows please tell me!
In the meantime I have now added an RSS feed for comments.
I appreciate every comment and if you haven’t heard from me check the old posts; there is probably a response there.
Responding to comments is indeed problematic. I always try to check back when I leave a comment that might elicit a response, but you can never be sure that the blogger read it, and if they leave a comment days later, you can easily miss it.
I have wanted to track comments on UnpluggedShop.com for the blogs I track – even something as simple as listing the number of comments on a post, but until more people have a more standard way of doing comments (like putting them in an RSS feed), it isn’t wothwhile.
I think some blogging software allows a person to enter an email address and get any updates to a particular post or blog, but that isn’t a perfect solution either.
[Reply]
Doug Berch Reply:
October 5th, 2008 at 9:38 AM
@Luke Townsley -
Hi Luke,
I’m glad to hear I’m not the only one trying to figure out how to best handle letting readers get my responses to comments. Hopefully having the RSS feed for comments will help.
Congratulations on the growth and expansion of your blog!
All the best,
Doug
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There is also a WordPress plugin that you can use that will allow you to click an icon next to the comment and then your response comment will be e-mailed to whomever left the comment, provided that they left their e-mail.
The plugin can be downloaded here: http://www.u-g-h.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/comment-email-responder.zip. Info click here.
I use this because I typically will not return to a blog to see if my comments have been responded to, and I assume that others do the same. This makes that easier. I noticed that you also have a thing that asks if you want to be notified of followup comments via e-mail. Maybe you can make that selected by default if there is a setting for it.
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Hi John,
Thanks for the tip. I’m trying the plugin with this very response
All the best,
Doug
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Hi, Doug,
Just stumbled across your site doing a search for something else and wanted to drop in and say hi. Glad to see things seem to be going well for you.
Best regards from Colorado from an old acquaintance and charter member of the Wafflebutt Society.
Dave Sawyer
[Reply]
@Dave Sawyer –
Good to hear from you Dave. I hope all is well and good with you and all the other Wafflebutts! Let me know how you are doing.
All the best,
Doug
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