Replying to comments and email
Posted by scoop on September 30th, 2006 in Blog basics, Business Blogging, Promotion, Tips, Writing |
As a problogger, one of the things that people probably like doing is commenting on your blog or sending you email. Some probloggers achieve celebrity status and as such, it might be difficult to handle all the emails, the comments and the spam. (Oh, yes, the spam — it is one of the most difficult things to deal with and I wouldn’t blame you if you get sick and tired of it!)
In any case, blogs are venues for people to interact and sometimes you have to be more active in moderating the discussion. Not that you will go on deleting comments at will. It’s more like making sure that the discussion on your blog entries are focused, on topic. It could be difficult sometimes if you have several people bickering over your blog and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. Blogs have somewhat evolved into public forums of sorts and sometimes you even get trolls.
So how do you go about replying to comments and email?
Be yourself.
You have a personality — whether it is something that annoys people or maybe you are loved by all, it is your personality. You can’t help but let it all out on your blog anyway. However there are things that we have to learn as we deal with other people. That brings us to the next bullet point…
Be tactful.
Even if the comment you receive could be the most vile thing ever, try to respond with tact. You don’t have to resort to whatever tactics the commenter has been using. Aside from that, you could make sure that you are the one who doesn’t make a mess out of things. Sometimes by being careless, you make things blow up in your face and that is totally not good.
Be prompt.
You could be quite busy yourself but try to respond on the blog comment promptly. Your delayed response might delay the discussion and that’s something I think you wouldn’t want to happen. Same thing goes for the emails you get.
These are simple things that you could keep in mind in order to make sure your relationship with your fellow bloggers and your blog readers would grow. The challenge is that you keep up with the discipline. Hopefully all will go well with you as you follow up on these things.
[tags]blogging,blogs, comments, emails, pro blogging, probloggers[/tags]
