Replying to comments on your blog is really important and necessary for your blog to become a great social environment.
Over time as your blog grows larger and gets more comments per post, you will find it harder to keep up with everything and replying to your comments. I find it fairly challenging to do it here, and we are still a fairly new blog.
Just like any other productivity measures you take to write consistently, or advertise your blog, you need to keep some comment productivity tips in mind. Hopefully the simple tips I am about to share with you will help you keep up with replying to all of your blog comments.
Make Replying to Comment a Higher Priority
I often find myself pushing “replying to comments” down my to do list, and it’s something that should really be taken more seriously than that.
If you make a to do list to manage your time on your blog, try adding “reply to blog comments” to the top. As the leader of a community, you need to take a stand and actively contribute to your community. You should always try to reply to each comment as promptly as you can. It’s hard to do at first, but I find that if you stick with it then it will just become a habit to you and you will eventually have faster, and overall better replies to your comments.
Methods For Replying to Comments
There are different methods that you can use for replying to your blog comments.
Replying from your Admin Panel
If you use WordPress 2.7, you will have an option to Reply to any comment posted on your blog right from there. It’s really easy to use, you simply click the ‘Reply’ link under each comment on your Comments page and a text input box will appear where you can type your message into and have it published to your blog.
The only downside to replying from your admin panel that I see is that it may seem a little unorganized. The comments on the screen aren’t organized, they’re just added to the page automatically as a comment gets published on your blog.
So with all of that in mind, you may get mixed up on what comment goes to what post, and you will also have a harder time distinguishing between the comments that were replied to, and comments that aren’t.
Replying on your blog
The way I normally reply to comments is to actually do it through the blog’s comment system. I prefer replying to comments this way because it’s a lot more organized than the admin panel is.
One thing that isn’t so great about replying from your blog is it can be harder to jump from post to post and reply to comments on different posts. However, the solution to jumping from post to post is just a little bit of code!
The following code you can add to your single.php file will show a link at the end (or wherever you choose to show it) of the page on each single post and let you jump to the next post, or the post before your current one.
<div class="pagenav">
<div class="old pnwidth"><?php previous_post_link('« %link') ?></div>
<div class="new pnwidth"><?php next_post_link('%link »') ?></div>
</div>
If you don’t understand what it does, scroll to the bottom of this page and you will see the previous post link.
Threaded Comments!
Threaded comments are just an absolute MUST to have on your blog. It increases community interaction, but it also makes replying easier and more convenient. Having something as easy as to use as Comment Threading will really make you a lot more productive.
If you don’t know how to enable threaded comments on your WordPress 2.7 blog, check out how to activate threaded comments here.
Share Your Tips
So those are just a small handful of tips for increasing your comment productivity on your blog. How do you keep up to date with all of your comments, if you reply to them on your blog? Share with us in the comments!
Image by Luc Legay
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It really helps if you reply to comments as soon as you read them I think also. This way the ideas are fresh in your mind, and you can reply to the comment with a clear point.
Yes, that’s pretty much like the idea of pushing replying to comments to the top of your to do list.
This goes nice;y with one of mine on my most popular list since last July. It’s sort of a “do it or else” twist. lol Glad to see we think alike…
http://www.directsaleswebmarketing.com/blog-comment-tip-respond-to-comments-or-risk-losing-subscribers/
Feel free to drop this post link in those comments as well. Cross promotion of like minded posts is good.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Looks like your post did good Dennis. Great minds think alike, right?
I noticed when I reply to every single comment, the people who commented before tend to come back to read more. They like that I am interacting with them, and I talk to them through comments like friends.
Kai Lo’s last blog post..Increase Traffic and Backlinks With Blog Comments
That’s exactly how I see it. I reply to some people’s comments, and now I notice a lot of regulars here who start discussion and come back to comment all of the time. It’s great what the little time it takes to reply to someone can get for you in return.
Replying to comment is important as it works hand in hand with what all blogger wishes: Returning readers.
If commenting is a great way to build visitor interaction, replying to comments is what helps to pursue the discussion one step further!
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
Very good point there Nicolas.
I suppose interacting with your reader by replying to their comments will make them feel involved and therefore more likely to return. Remember to have engaging content as well though
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..The Importance Of A Good Logo
I guess content quality is required and assumed Simon… if not there wouldn’t be much to comment and discuss! :p
Nicolas Prudhon’s last blog post..Understanding Google New Algorithm
True, but I think a lot of the time people who hire someone to write their content will go for low cost rather than quality articles written by a professional who understands things such as conversational writing and how to engage readers
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
Do you think it’s more important to have a few returning visitors, or a lot of on and off readers?
Obviously your main goal is to turn as many on and off readers into regulars as possible. With that said, you want regular readers.
Regulars are the ones that will talk about you. These on and off readers are the same on other blogs; possibly many. They now see you being talked about and return again and again.
With any luck at all, said goal is now met. On and off has become regular and the cycle continues.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Does a bit of both count?
I think that it’s good to have at least a small base of recurring visitors who will comment on your posts and that sort of thing, but at the same time I think it’s important to get as much traffic.
I think if I HAD to go for one of those two it’d be the ‘few returning visitors’ option. Much better to have a blog with comments etc than one with lots of crap traffic
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
Thanks Alex. I confess I do reply to comments but not always straight away. It’s good to be reminded about the importance of that! I’ve also been meaning to get the threaded comments set up on my blog … no time like the present moment!
Cheers
Ian
Ian Peatey’s last blog post..Confession time
I often suffer from “commentcrastination” and reply to some comments I get in a few hours. Really though, it depends on what I’m doing at the time of the comment being posted though.
Great post, Alex.
I’ve been thinking about threaded comments for a while. At the moment my comment section seems really messy because I have to do all the ‘@username’ replies rather than just replying straight to their comment.
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..The Importance Of A Good Logo
We used to do those @replies here, but then we remembered we are NOT Twitter. You should really look into threaded comments Simon, it will help your developing community. Seriously man!
Thanks for the advice
Threaded comments have now been installed on my blog, as well as a complete overhaul of the comments section… looks soo much better now. Lets hope it has a positive effect on the comments now
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
I always reply to new comments on my blog, especially if they’re questions, or really interesting statements. Staying active and making readers feel like you’re present is an important part of blogging in general.
Corey Freeman’s last blog post..How to Write Case Studies that Inspire Your Readers
I love answering reader questions, and responding to generally informative comments. It shows me that people are actually reading what I write, and that’s a great thing to know to be honest!
Gives you a nice feeling when you’re post gets informative comments (or ones that provoke discussion), doesn’t it?!
I do think that threaded comments (or at least an attractive comment area) help alot. ATM if you look on Teenius (my site) the comment section is really bad. Just saving to get a designer to fix it
Anyone know how much that sort of thing would cost? To get a whole new comments section designed?
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..The Importance Of A Good Logo
I can hook you up. If it’s just the comments then it shouldn’t be too irritating. Shoot me an email from the blog.
Corey Freeman’s last blog post..20 Post Ideas for Case Studies
As we’ve discussed previously, I agree with you – replying to blog comments is extremely important, but it seems more difficult to actually initiate comments in the first place for us over at Zulu. At the current time, we’re getting many blog views, but with a distinct lack of participation. I think because they too (both of our blogs – http://www.zuludigital.co.uk/blogs.php and http://www.zulucreative.co.uk/blogs.php), are new blogs, it may take some time, and as a commercial entity, we’re targeting traffic in those who are unaware of various SEO/Internet Marketing/Strategy techniques which our blogs discuss, and therefore, feel they are ‘not qualified’ to comment.
Zulu Internet Marketing’s last blog post..Developing Your Brand through Social Media
We suffer from the same thing. We are new, yet we do get some pretty decent traffic and not always the most comments. I guess it’s just a common thing for new blogs, but it’s our challenge to turn those visits into comments.
This comment thread has raised very interesting point that recently swarmed my brain, regarding admins response times…..I think I’ll blog about it.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Awesome, let me know what you write up!
Would CommentLuv help as well?
I’ve noticed that a lot of the blogs I comment on that are successful with a nice community have CommentLuv enabled. Is there a trend, or are the blog owners just being nice?
Simon | Teenius’s last blog post..Five Reasons Why Wordpress Rocks
It helps big time.
Dennis Edell’s last blog post..Seeking April Comment Contest Sponsors!
Nice post, thanks you to sharing it with us!
I mostly have trouble keeping up with all the different blogs I’m subscribed to and commenting all over the place and such.
I have no problem (as of right now) keeping up with things on my own.
Eric´s last blog ..Blogging Is Important… Here’s Why