Comment Management
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This post is in response to a very kind new commenter on Riley central, Ajeet. He asked in response to my post on commenting how I would offer guidelines for comment management as a blog writer. It was a humbling request, since I truly do not receive that many comments in a given day. Still, I do receive enough to offer a few suggestions. Firstly, answering comments is equivalent to posting comments on another persons blog in one respect: thoughtfulness. In a way, it could al be reduced down to that word. You can read more on my commenting guidelines at the first post I wrote on the matter. In that post, I refer to comments as “discussions.” The best comments on my site usually start discussions and then I “thoughtfully” do my best to respond to what happens therein.
Beyond that I don’t have much more to say in the way of comment content. The same principles apply when responding as do in posting. As far as the back of house stuff goes, replying to comments is possible only when you are aware of the comments. SO, you need a system that keeps you up to speed. For me, at the low volume I receive, email notifications work well. In additon, I surf through the Akismet spam section occasionally and usually find one or two legitimate ones in there. If several people have commented since my response, I use the @ key. ie; “@Derek: Excelent point as always and what do you think of . . .” and then line by line a new @ for whoever left a comment.
When you surf blogs, make sure you get the RSS feed for the comments at places you leave them or check the email notifications box. I think it’s irresponsible to leave a comment and never intend to read responses to it . . . or, in the same way . . . I think it’s a bit irresponsible to not respond to the comments on your own blog.
That’s my 2 cents. What do you think? OH . . . and one last thing (glad I remembered to put this in): When it comes to giving or replying to comments, flattery will get you EVERYWHERE!!! Good rule of thumb.
I'm Damien Riley, author and teacher. Here you'll find "think outside the box" posts on psychology and inspiration. 
In the beginning, I never responded to comments made, but I can see now that the pay off of spending extra time in doing so helps in your retained readership as well as being a courtesy. Let’s face it, blogging is a commitment. I have more than one blog, but Miscellaneous Matters seems to be the constant while the others are sub-sections if you will.
Over time I have whittled my blogs down to one. I find that more than one dissipates my creative energy and let’s face it . . . I’ve only a humans measure of it!
I used to have a second one called “My LIfe in the Classroom” that was purely stories from my teaching experiences. Blogging is a lot more rewarding for me now that I do all my writing on Riley Central. You are correct to say that blogging is a lot of work. I wouldn’t do it unless I got a lot out of it!
I like to subscribe when I can and I actually bookmark some blogs for further reading. You can meet some pretty interesting characters when commenting on blogs.
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