How To on Blog Comments and Getting Replies

Did you know that many bloggers would reply individually to you via email if your address showed up in the comment notification email?  They would.  Or, they should.  Some times.  Whatever.  

Most of us who blog LOVE to get comments.  It's nice reinforcement that other people get us.  They dig our work or our words.  Or that there are even people out there reading our blogs.  Some times I used to feel like there were always crickets chirping in the background.  Now I feel the love, but it took time to grow my blog.  To establish the relationships.  For you all to get to know me.  I understand.  I'm not the coolest blogger out there and some times my blog does wander from beads to family/kids and I get that there are some of you who are not at all interested in kids.  You're all about the beads  (or the vacations, as it seems).  And I'm ok with that.  Seriously.  

Look at all these comments next to each post?  I get butterflies.  You guys make my heart sing.  You really do.

So in case you're interested in getting email replies directly from the blog writer, this is what you need to do.  If you go to your profile page (you should be able to get there from your Dashboard once you login to Blogger), you can click on that blue EDIT PROFILE button over on the top left.

Then you can just click that little box next to: Show my email address.  Scroll down and click the Save Settings button.  That's it.  Now your email address will be in the Sender field to the blog owner of where you left your comment.

This post has been in the back of my mind for quite awhile because I would love to respond to emails if /when I receive comments.  I can't get on my blog during the day (cause I'm workin to pay the bills) and then I don't always remember to go back at night to my posts and reply back to the comments.  You'd think I would remember, since it is normally in the evenings when I am setting up my post for the next day.  Sleep deprivation shows itself in different ways.  But to those of you who have felt neglected, please accept my apologies for my slackness.  I do love hearing from you.

I got nudged into doing this after reading a few other blogs that struck true for me and reminded me of basic courtesy, why some of us blog and then our duty as bloggers to respond.  If you take the time to comment, we really should be taking the time to acknowledge.  Lori Anderson of Pretty Things discussed kindness here.  Nicki hits the nail on the head here for describing the feelings of worthiness that comments generate and discerning the difference between true blog followers and those that followed just to jump through a giveaway hoop.  And Barbara eloquently covers blogging responsibilities and the motivation behind blogging here. 

Last night I alluded to a giveaway coming soon for one of my lucky blog followers.  That goes along with the above reasoning that I want to surprise one of my loyal followers or friends who comes to my blog on a regular basis.  While it IS good publicity to get a giveaway out on twitter and it DOES generate gobs of traffic to the blog, it doesn't necessarily bring the people who share common interests or would want to be friends with me.  Who are genuinely interested in what I have to say or the processes I go through to make the beads.  That can be good for generating traffic to my etsy shop and possibly lead to sales and the original purpose of my blog was to promote my beads business.  

But my purpose has shifted and what I have come to realize over this last year of blogging is that the friendships I have gained from my blog are more meaningful to me than the bead sales.  The feedback and comments you leave for me are what continue to inspire and motivate me.  I have met some of you in person at bead shows (from Atlanta to Philadelphia) and others live practically in my backyard, like Lori Plyler of Waterstone.  Others have become personal friends who I keep up with through instant messages, texts and phone calls.  How awesome is that?

New egg pics coming tomorrow!