A great way to interact with the commenters on your blog
I've had a post in draft for two weeks about a new WordPress plugin I'm using, but I kept holding off on publishing it because I thought it might be too techy (read: "boring") for my personal blog. However, I've recently seen a few posts out there by people searching for answers to the problem this plugin solves, so here goes.
Darren has a great post about getting interactive with your blog readers. Among other things, Megan asks how do you respond to comments, and Problem Girl says she's going to start responding to comments even though it is a pain for her to do on Blogger.
I used to have the dilemma about responding to comments too. If someone asked a general question I would respond on the blog, but otherwise I'd respond in email. What I didn't like about this approach is that when you looked at the comments on my posts it appeared that I never respond when that is not the case.
So a few weeks ago I was delighted to discover a WordPress plugin called Comment Email Responder. It lets you respond to comments on your blog, and your response ALSO gets emailed to the original commenter. It is freaking fabulous.
Do you already use the Subscribe to Comments plugin? No problem, if the person you're responding to is already subscribed to that entry, they will only get one email, not two. Sweet.
The only downside of the plugin is that you have to respond separately to each comment, so you end up looking like a jackass who is trying to inflate the comment count. But I think it works so well for the readers in every other way that I'm willing to look like a jackass.
See what I do for you people? Aw… I'm feeling the love already ;-)
I'm horrible about responding to comments. So much that I let it be known in my comment policy page. (Which is kind of ironic.)
(Sometimes the comments are smarter than anything I've ever written.)
Kathy's latest post: Because I find myself using words like "interestingness" daily
Yeah, I've heard that it is hard to deal with comments in Blogger. Bummer! And I completely agree about some of the best writing being in the comments section ;-)
How I respond to commentsAs the resident tech-goddess (well, to my frineds anway) *how* did I not know about this plugin???
Thanks for your kind comments about the plugin. You're not the first person to ask for the ability to respond to multiple comments at a time. I'll be building it into a future version.
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Thanks for the tip. And as for looking like a jackass…well that comes naturally for me!lol
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Kellyology, true that — I figure this entire blog is a giant tribute to me being a jackass, so what's one more log on that fire in the grand scheme of things?
How I respond to commentsI usually respond to my commenters via email but rarely do so on the blog. This sounds great and I'm gonna give it a go for sure.
Jen, I'm loving it muchly so far. I like having the conversation out on the page so everyone can join in. Come back and let me know how it goes.
How I respond to commentsand here I was thinking you were SUPERWOMAN b/c you always replied to my little comments… OK, ok, you can still be superwoman. But what about all of us wimpy blogger.com people! No plugin, or do you think the WP is universal? See how I'm too lazy to figure it out on my own?? Yah, again — you really are superwoman!
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that girl, I'm afraid there's no Blogger equivalent short of moving your blog to wordpress.org :(
::flys away in cape. crashes into side of building. limps away hoping no one saw…::
How I respond to commentsOne more damn reason I think I should be on WP.
But I love TypePad so.
This makes me think that the painful process of responding on my blog and emailing the commenters to check for the response is still the best route. Though, harrying.
And I love how you said, "Among other things, Megan asked…" because Megan loves to write one incredibly long post about ten things when she could just break it up into 10 separate small posts.
Velveteen Mind - Megan's latest post: The Big Tease #1
I use that plug-in too and I LOVE it. :)
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I realize this is a dense question. But I can't use that if I use Blogger right?
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Lotta, sorry– it is wordpress only :(
How I respond to commentsOh, awesome, I've been looking for a plug-in like this for awhile now. Thanks for doing the legwork!
Before I read this all the way through I was going to leave you a comment saying "Hey! I just talked about this!" but then I read closer and say that you kind of already mentioned me. So now I don't have to leave you a comment. Only I just did so ….. hmmmmm.
This is awesome!! Thanks so much for the heads up. Woohoo!
[...] Plain Jane Mom and others have lamented, it's hard to know whether to reply to commenters via email, ie [...]
Yay! This is exactly what I've been looking for. I'm going to intall it right away!
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Made my day just a little easier. Thank you.