Commentating is a big part of blogging, whether it be replying to comments on your own blog or on someone elses. I have spoken about commenting before in posts such as ‘Some ways to encourage visitors to comment‘ and ‘Commentating is like freakin catnip for blogs!‘. In this post i will show you how you can organise your comments much better.
Most bloggers use the same email address for everything to do with their blog however by using different email addresses for your comments you can organise everything much better.
Here are the emails i suggest you set up :
- A contact email address – This email address is the one which you will add to your blogs feedback form. It is also the email you will most likely use when contacting people with issues regarding your blog. For example, feedback@yourblog.com or contact@yourblog.com.
- An email address for comments on your own blog – This email address is for updates to comments on your own blog. In wordpress, the email address which you will receive updates on is the one attached to your own profile, not the email address in your site settings. Most blog scripts work in a similar way. I strongly recommend getting comment updates to all posts as standard as comments are sometimes made on older posts and they are very easy to miss.
- An email address for comments on other blogs – If you comment a lot on other blogs this is essential. You enter this email address when making a comment on another blog.
Once you have your email addresses set up you should create some folders in your pop email client and set some message rules to direct the incoming emails into their respective folders.
What has all this achieved? Well, when you load up your email client in the morning your blog email messages will download into 3 seperate folders. You will have one folder full of emails from your feedback form, one with emails telling you which posts on your blog have new comments and one with updates to posts you have commented on.
I hope that you find this post helpful. I’ve found this setup to be very useful as it allows me to prioritize what i need to do on that day – i respond to feedback emails first, then comments on my blog and then comments on other blogs.
If you have any tips for organising your comments please leave a reply or write about it on your own blog and ping this post 
thanks
Kevin
Nice tips. As of right now, I don't even have a separate email for my personal emails!
Yes, I agree that this is useful especially when a blog is very popular =)
Think I should plan for future now
That's a really good idea. If only I could get my pop email to work…. I consider myself to be pretty tech savy, but setting up an email with say outlook… beyond me. Actually, I've done it before, but I obviously have set some setting a bit different with my current host and I haven't figured it out yet.
I have a similar system, but with one e-mail. I use rules to make different e-mails appear in different colors. I use "subject" line to differentiate my messages between my different blogs and comments. I also have my brothers and such e-mails flagged and automatically move to the top of my list.
Commenting on different sites will usually have the words comment in the subject line, so I search that out instead of using different actual addresses.
Wow, good tips, thanks Kevin. I never think about, but I find this very useful and try it now.
Great idea. I will have to put it to use.
Thanks! I still can manage my email since there are not many in the inbox at this moment. Maybe I will do this setup in the future hopefully.
Good idea, Kevin. It's often the simplest things, like this, that we overlook.
Keep up the great work.
I usually just use GMail filters for everything.
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Baz L
Day In The Life of Baz