Manage time by sorting your blog comments in 6 ways
With more and more people going online, responding to comments is becoming more of a standard task for people other than bloggers alone. Vivien from Inspiration Bit recently started a group writing project revolving around time management. Since there are many different ways to figure out a good plan to follow when responding to comments on your blog, I decided to present to you a few of them..
I have no specific rule or method to follow when responding to comments, so I would like to present below 6 of the many ways that I have used in the past to sort comments out. The 6 methods below can let you know which comments to respond to first depending on your situation, and whether or not you should respond to a certain comments. For this entire article we are assuming a situation where you respond to comments by commenting yourself on your blog.
6 ways to sort comment responses to help you save time
- Are you obligated to respond to comments?
The first and foremost question you can ask yourself is whether or not you have to respond to comments. Responding to comments for some people is a way of appreciating others, and for others it is a way to appreciate and communicate. Still some people respond to comments to fulfill an obligation, and some people respond to comments to that they can earn more money.
You have to figure out whether or not you want to respond to comments. When you realize if and why you want to respond to comments, you will hopefully and gradually realize how to approach comments. I respond to comments because I want to, and not because I feel obligated. That helps me decide when to respond to comments altogether.
If your readers expect you to respond to comments, you can set aside some time in your life or some of the time that you spent on various activities on your blog, to commenting and responding to comments.
- Rate of new comments
One of the ways to figure out a good way to save time when responding to comments is to observe the number of new comments you are currently receiving. If your site is receiving a few comments every week, you can either respond to them immediately or wait until you have several comments before you respond to all of them. If your site receives several comments every few days, you can either respond to the comments immediately or wait until you have many comments that need responding.
If you are getting dozens of comments every hour or so, you can try to respond to comments immediately so that you do not end up with a lot of comments to respond to later on. Responding to a hundred comments as an obligation will either result in your comments to be of inferior quality, or result in more time spent on responding to comments because of the stress of realizing the existence of a huge backlog of comments. Less stress means more focus in many cases, and comments of better quality, resulting in time saved and more effective results.
- Amount of time passed
The age of a comment can also be used to figure out which comments to respond to. Many people respond to older comments first, while waiting for the new comments to become a bit older.
If your site gets a lot of comments, one way to manage the time spent on commenting more effectively can be to set a time frame after which you must respond to a comment of a certain age. For example, you can decide to respond to all comments that are a week old, allowing you a week’s time before you respond to comments.
- Type of comments
The type of comment you get can also be used to plan your time more effectively when responding to comments. Is there a comment that cannot be responded to? Is there a comment that is disagreeing with you? Is there a comment that is agreeing with you? Is there a comment that you want to respond to?
You can see the different types of comments you get and decide which ones to address first. You have to keep in mind, as in all the other methods also, that you do not discriminate or have prejudice against someone when sorting out the comments. For example, responding to agreeing comments first and responding to disagreeing comments after a long time can be unfair in many cases to readers who disagree with you.
- Your life outside of a single blog
How busy are you outside of the blog in question? Do you have many other blogs and blog comments to take care of? The amount of time you spend on commenting should hopefully be a little bit in conformity with the amount of time you spend on other things.
For example, I love watching movies. Therefore, when I want to go out and watch a movie, I try to revolve different things around the movie, including responding to comments. If I can write something useful in the amount of time I have before heading out to a movie, I will probably comment. Otherwise, I will wait until I get back from the movie theatre, because I like responding to comments without any obligation. In the time I have before the movie, I spend it on something else and not on comments [I love movies, if you haven't noticed].
- Comments which call for some input from you
Some of your blog comments may actually be something other than comments. Some comments may prompt you to act in some manner. Among the many other things, a comment may ask you a question, ask you for help, ask you for more information, or simply give you some more information so that you can continue doing something you were already doing.
If a commentor asks you a question, it can usually be a good idea to respond to a comment as soon as possible. Why? Because the person who asked you the question may be waiting for your answer. If you can only have one form of separation between the different forms of comments, one of the best things to do is to have a separation based on comments that require no input from you and comments that require or ask for some input from you.
The best way to sort comments that need responding
The single best way to sort comments that need responding depends on each situation. I follow my own custom rules every single day, and I keep coming up with different methods each day also, depending on me, my personal life, the topics the comments are addressing, etc.
Hopefully the above 6 ways will help you figure out how to manage your time more efficiently when it comes to responding to comments, whether you get a single comment a week or a single comment every minute.
What do you think? Can you share some ways you sort out the different comments when you are trying to respond to them?
Thank you for reading. 
Thank you, also, Vivien for having the group project.
inspirationbit says...
First of all, thanks for your contribution to the Time Management group writing project, Bes.
Many interesting and helpful thoughts and tips on how to respond to comments. I usually wait one day for a few comments before replying to all of them, if there are no more comments after that one day, then I reply to them right away. Sometimes if I have time to spare or I find the comments urgent or have a reply right away that I can’t keep for too long, then I comment much sooner.
I usually like to reply to every comment. If it’s me commenting on other blogs where the authors reply to most of the comments, and my comment is left unnoticed, that doesn’t make me feel happy at all. So I try keeping that in mind, and reply to all comments.
Simonne says...
For me, sorting starts with deleting the spam. After that, there is no much left to answer to ;). I answer immediately every comment, operation which takes about 5 minutes. I check the new comments several times a day, so I never spend too much time at once on this.
Bes says...
Vivien-inspiration, thank you for the comment, and thank you for allowing me to participate in the group project.
I see: so you have sort of a plan in place for both responding to comments based on their age and responding to comments based on their urgency. That is nice, since it can probably help avoid having a huge backlog in the long run.
I understand about not feeling appreciated when someone does not respond to a comment. Sometimes I will ask questions at other blogs and the bloggers will simply go by it, without answering me. Then later, some of those same bloggers will call and invite more comments, which will puzzle me.
Do you think there can be one or a few rules or ways that can probably apply to all or most of the blogs, when it comes to realizing how to approach the task of commenting and responding to comments?
Thanks for sharing inspirationbit!
Simonne, thanks for the comment.
Spam is an important issue, true, and everyday I am getting more and more comment spam also.
The method you described for approaching and responding to comments seems very good too, since it can result in no backlog of over a day or two. In theory, how would you approach a lot of comments that may have piled up while you were busy with something else? Would you approach all comments immediately or take one particular kind of comment first?
Thanks again.
Simonne says...
Bes, I think that I would first answer the ones which do not require research or deeper thinking, because they don’t take too much time. For the more ellaborate answers, publishing them 10-15 minutes later than intended is not so important, while publishing a whole bunch of easy answers with a delay of several hours, due to the research I needed to do, could make those readers lose interest.
Jenny McB says...
Well with your blog, you get email addresses automatically,do you reply to all by email? I am never sure how to reply, whether through my comment page or individual emails.
Thank you for sharing your strategies.
Bes says...
Simonne, thanks for the comment. Late acknowledgment by me, sorry. You make a good point about readers losing interest: time spent waiting can result in distractions or something else. I am in that situation right now: I have delayed some responses and many acknowledgment, none of them critical in the eyes of the receivers/commetors, because I am trying to do some research on a few things.
A simple plan implementing your solution effectively can be a big time saver and can organize things also.
Hi Jenny McB,
Thanks for the very good question. The answer can depend mainly on 2 things:
1 : You. Which communication method do you prefer? What method have you used in the past? If you are more comfortable with e-mail, go ahead with that route. Otherwise, commenting can be a great time saver. Usually, if a topic is personal and may require a personal answer, you can always e-mail people. For example, I have not been able to blog on my own site for a while now, and I am personally e-mailing many people as I am not yet able to answer everyone. That way, I can still keep in touch with people and when I do comment, I will probably give a very short reply to people I have already e-mailed. Sometimes, you can e-mail a person first in detail and also include something in a public comment so that others can benefit also.
2 : The other person. Many people are not used to receiving direct, personal e-mail replies to their comments. Many other people are not used to comments on blogs. If you cannot find out through the comment or through any blog that a commentor may have that they prefer e-mails over comments or vice versa, you can always e-mail that person and at the end of the e-mail, ask them if they are comfortable/ok with e-mail responses instead of comment responses. That way, the first e-mail will not be an annoyance for either of you, and the other person can let you know what method they like.
Also, if you are using WordPress [or a similar platform], plugins like Subscribe to Comments may be of help, as they allow commentors to get notified via e-mail of any new comment replies, thus turning your comment communication to your commentors into e-mails also.
[if the above site does not work or is slow, please try again a bit later.]
Hope that helps Jenny! Please let me know if it didn’t, if it did, or if you have any other questions.
Steve says...
Thought it was a good point on the amount of time spent replying to the comments. Where do you draw the line. 9-5 then blog time + dev time, not enough hours in the day. I forgot about eatting time…