Blog Comments And The Art Of Conversation
Filed in Building Traffic (Blogging 201)
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Every blogger loves getting comments. No, strike that: every blogger loves getting comments from people interested in contributing to the conversation on their blog, and not merely being comment whores. Most bloggers also have a love-hate relationship with their email InBox: helpful emails are always welcome, but novel-length diatribes and unnecessary messages simply waste time.
One of the biggest time wasters? Sending/receiving replies to each and every blog comment. Yes, there are times when an email reply is called for: perhaps you want to privately discuss a matter or need to chastise someone over inflammatory remarks.
But sending an email response to every comment can lead to fewer comments (and visits), not more.
1. You may be killing the conversation. Readers often skim comments left by others, sometimes choosing to leave their own in response. By taking the conversation to email, you’re depriving them of the opportunity to participate. The result? You may think you’re interacting with your readers, but the only one who knows it is the person who received your emailed reply. Others just see a string of comments you’ve seemingly ignored.
2. Most emailed replies don’t add value. Sending a one-sentence message to acknowledge receipt of a comment wastes time which could have been spent generating content. If you’re concerned about overlooking a first-time commenter, use the Comment Relish plug-in and craft a message that sounds personalized.
3. Email begets email. Everyone knows how annoying it is to feel obligated to reply to an email they’d rather ignore. Blog readers receiving an emailed reply are no different: they have to decide if they’d be rude not to reply to you.
How much good will do you think they’ll feel about leaving future comments when each one will likely generate another email? And, if they reply to you it means you have to decide whether to reply. Lather, rinse, repeat and so on. It doesn’t take long for someone leaving comments at your blog to realize that you are one of the causes of their overstuffed InBox.
The solution: reply to your comments with comments.
Think of yourself as the host/hostess of your comment section. It’s much like throwing a cocktail party where your guests are talking as a group: you’re there to facilitate the ongoing conversation and to help everyone have a good time.
Would you pull each of your party guests away from the others to respond one-on-one? Of course not (unless one of them got out of line or said something better addressed in private). A good host or hostess knows that the best way to entertain is by fostering witty conversation.
Two ways to accomplish that: use nested comments so readers can reply to each other (you can see it in action in my comment section here) and install the subscribe to comments plug-in so readers who want to follow the conversation can do so. Then spend your time replying to individual comments in your comment section.
You’ll be saving yourself time while acknowledging those who made the effort to leave a comment. Even better: your other readers, seeing how interactive you are with your audience, will be more likely to join in the conversation as a result.
This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 8:14 am and is filed under Building Traffic (Blogging 201). Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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Top Commenters
I can only believe that this post is geared some-what towards me after my breakdown the other day. Comments are one of the hardest things for me to manage all around. I don’t have nested comments and I think this would be a wonderful way to interact with my readers. I want, so much, for my readers to know that I’m listening to what they say….I just lack a plan of action I guess.
I’m headed to try and figure out this nested comments thing. I’m not good at replacing files and such so I hope I don’t mess things up.
Lori’s last blog post..Winning the Web Over with a Crazy Contest
Um, no, actually it wasn’t geared toward you at all!
Between all of my different blogs I wind up reading over 500 feeds per week, Lori, and I leave comments at well over half of those blogs. I’d say, on the average, a good 50% of the bloggers where I do comment wind up sending one-line replies to a comment I’ve left.
Meanwhile, their entries seldom have more than a couple of comments and I suspect that’s partially because they take the conversation off their blogs and into email.
To top it off, they often blog about how little traffic or comments they get. Well, DUH! People don’t have to come back to their site to see if there’s a reply (they already got it via email). And who wants to leave comments for a blogger who looks like they’re ignoring their readers?
Plus if you’re InBox is overwhelmed already (as mine is) then you learn to avoid commenting at those sites.
And, no, I wasn’t referring to yours!
Definitely some good points you make Kate. A light just came on and it’s saying that commenting is one reason why your readership is so loyal to you. DUH! Treat others as you would like to be treated right?!
500 feeds! Geez, I can’t even manage mine properly and I’m not near that many. It’s on my to do list…LOL.
Lori’s last blog post..Winning the Web Over with a Crazy Contest
I have to admit: I spent the first two years on ElectricVenom.com mostly ignoring my comment section. I figured, I’d already said my piece in my entry, right? So I let folks talk amongst themselves and only stepped in when trolls started flame wars.
My traffic levels reflected that stance, and I just couldn’t figure out why. Then one night I was bored and didn’t feel like writing an entry, so I started replying to comments.
Traffic doubled overnight and eventually grew to where I didn’t have to blog nearly as often to keep visitors flowing in. Blogging got to be a lot more fun, too!
500 feeds… yeah. There are blogs I read to acquire information, blogs I read for a good laugh, blogs written by friends and blogs from people who’ve been kind to me/my blogs.
I need to cut down, but then I’m either depriving myself of learning about things that interest me, or I feel like I’m being ungrateful/rude.
So I figure: who needs sleep, right?
I found this at bloggingzoom and you couldn’t be more right. I hardly subscribe to comments via email for the same in box clogging reason. I do acknowlede the reader right there by commenting though or I visit their blog and return the favour.
Dee’s last blog post..Where is My Beard?
I do pretty much the same thing, Dee. Speaking of which, I’m off to visit your blog now!
I’m still learning.
There’s so much to learn with this blogging/commenting thing.
But that’s half the fun!
I love comments; they’re my favorite thing about blogging! I’m so with you on emailed replies; there’s no oomph there at all! Well, there are two people that email me back and we frequently get into long, drawn out conversations and that I dearly love… but there are exceptions to every rule.
pam’s last blog post..The Vista battle rages on