ActiveRain - How Do You Follow Up on Your Comments?

Making comments in ActiveRain is very much part of our routine. Yes we do get points for the comments (called incentive) but the comments are integral to what makes AR so interesting. If you've ever blogged "on the outside" you know what it's like to work hard on a post and then the crickets chirp as you wait for somebody, anybody to answer. (at least when you first start) However, from your very first blog post in AR, you get a few comments and each post that you do you gain more associates and subscribers and the discussion gets better all the time!

There have been quite a few posts lately about how the best etiquette is to follow up on comments made on your blog. It has been noted not to ignore, nor to just give a blanket "thank you all" comment. If you make specific acknowledgements to each commenter, it is a much more personal conversation. I've been trying to do that lately, I hope you've noticed!

Now here's the thought for this post... how do you follow up on the comments that you have made on other people's blogs? It is interesting to go back and see what the person had to say to YOU when you visited THEIR blog. On the main "My Home" page of AR at the bottom is "Your Messages" - this shows you ALL activity on your account which includes comments you've made, comments you've received, associates gained, contact emails that have been sent to you, etc. Thus with all of this together, it is a pretty busy dashboard. You have the option to find the "comments you've made" references and click through to go back to see if there has been followup. That's ok. But I like something BETTER. See if you agree...

On the "My Home" page on the left sidebar menu, down a bit is the "My Comments" link. I like this page better than the home page for two reasons
(1) This is a filtered listing of ONLY YOUR comments and it is quick and easy to trace back the past couple of days (if you are an active blogger, your home page will have lots of OTHER notifications and you will appreciate this stripped down listing)

(2) when you click on a link via "My Comments" it not only takes you to the page but it takes you to the exact point (anchor) in the comment stream where you made your comment! So you only have to scroll down a little to see the response. Especially on a featured post and you are down the list a ways, this makes a BIG difference. In Barbara's post below, I was comment #156, now that would have been some serious scrolling that it saved me!

Finally, I take advantage of the bookmarks bar on my browser. I put buttons to all my most visited pages and (AR gets many buttons here to the various sub pages). Rather than multi-click to get in to this comments listing, I shortcut it on my bar and it is always only one click away for me. Furthermore, once I get to my comments listing page, I always middle button click on several of the page links I want to go back to. When I do this, they line up as new tabs in my browser and I can rapid fire click through my tabs to follow up and see if I have any replies yet. (BTW any guesses what my abbreviated AR buttons are on my bookmarks bar, I'll post soon about how to customize your own bar if you need more help with that, stay tuned)

Well that's how I do it! Maybe it gives you an idea to try it out. We have busy schedules don't we and every little timesaver to me is important!