Responding to comments on Blog Posts

I recently posed the question "Do you respond to comments on your posts?" to the Wealthy Affiliates brains trust.

Now I was not very clear with my question, while I was thinking about responding to comments made on posts on your personal website(s), a number of the WA members who responded to the question assumed it was about posts here on WA.

In the end it does not matter whether we are talking about our personal websites or the WA blogs, there was a common theme in the responses I received.

Why ask the question

Before I get to what I learnt from the exercise, let me digress for a bit and fill you in on what prompted me to ask the question in the first place.

I have been using the great thread "Need website comments? the give and take comment thread" not only to get comments for my site, but as a way to see what other WA members are doing. In the process I am reading blogs I would never normally read, and providing comments in return to comments on my site.

Now if you have never used this thread, I highly recommend that you do. It is a wonderful part of our community, but I am digress on my digression.....

One thing I have noticed, was how often I would not get a response to my comment. Even when I asked a question, silence, no response.

This got me to wondering what was best practice? So I asked the Brains Trust (and some who claimed to have no brains but who I trust...) what they would do.

The answer to the million dollar question....

The consensus view among the response I received was that it was best practice to respond to all legitimate comments on your posts (both your personal website and here at WA).

Now there was some qualifiers, the usual spam comments, people leaving negative comments or just plain trolling. You wouldn't respond to them, well you wouldn't even approve them, but thats a discussion for another blog post.

Some of the responses to the question which I feel captured why you should respond to all comments include

I think it is important to acknowledge the effort and time that each person has invested in visiting my website and writing a comment.
"Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself."
Pernilla

And

If someone took their valuable time and were interested enough to write on mine, they deserve my response.

Kaju

I few people mentioned that sometimes, particularly with our blog posts here on WA that it can be difficult and potentially overwhelming to reply to all the comments (particularly when you have had a couple of days away from the community). Something I can understand quite well.

Another common response was that particularly here on WA, with the option of liking someones comment. That people use the like feature as a way of acknowledging a comment as opposed to responding to it. I know that I use these feature myself, particularly where I have made a comment and that person has responded to my comment, if I don't have anything more to add I'll just hit like.

Another great point made by Patsy, google loves comments and responses...

Also, this is huge for Google as it's engaging with potential customers. Google ranks and indexes them! I know this because it's on my indexed list and it shows in the word 'comment'.

Best practice within the WA community is to respond to try to respond to all comments on our posts (here at WA or on our own websites).

By responding we have shown are appreciation for the time someone has put in to read and comment on our post.

Finally, google loves it. While not my primary motivator, anything which helps with our ranking with google is something we should be doing.

Have a wonderful day :)

Brendan

P.S. I would like to thank everyone who took the time to respond to my question and provide valuable feedback.