Thursday, April 5, 2012

E is for Enabling Email


Wow, I'm late getting this post up today! It's on account of the food poisoning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could've been on the ball and had it scheduled long before the food poisoning hit. I didn't on account of the intense revisions. See? I can come up with an excuse for anything!

Two things today, bloggers & commenters, and they're both about email. How to respond to comments via email, and how to let others respond to you via email. 

For the last week or two, I've been mostly responding to comments via email. It's been a hard decision to switch from commenting in the comments to commenting in emails, but I think it's what will work best. Please, PLEASE, I beg of you: Please enable your email so I can respond to you!! It makes me 50 kinds of sad when you leave a comment that so begs a response, and I can't respond! I know it makes other bloggers want to cry into their keyboards, too. I speak for people I've no right to speak for when I say, I SWEAR we will do nothing nefarious with your email address. If you're still nervous about giving it out, maybe think about getting a second email account used just for blogging. It doesn't have to use whatever email address you use to sign in.

And huge apologies, WordPress / other non-Blogger blog users! Blogger is what I know. Okay, so first things first.

Enabling your email so that others can respond to your comments via email:

This one is actually easy. Go to your profile. You can do this by clicking on your name link in any comment that you make.

Or, if you are using the old interface of blogger, from your dashboard, click on Edit Profile.

Or, if you're using the new interface of Blogger, in the top right hand corner, you'll see your name with a little triangle next to it. Click on the triangle, and you'll see ...

... this. Blogger Profile. Click on it.

Then on the screen that comes up, click on Edit Profile in the top right.

Then, just enter whatever email address you want, and save. Easy peasy. And remember-- it doesn't have to be the email you sign in with-- it can be any email address you want. (Although I wouldn't recommend setting it to somebody else's email address just to be funny. But that would be funny.)

If you want to reply to your commenters' comments by email:

This is actually pretty simple, too. All you have to do is have Blogger email any comments to the email address you use for this kind of thing. When those emails come in, you can just reply to them (as long as they set up their email-- if they didn't, their email address will show up as noreply-comment@blogger.com)

If you're using the old Blogger interface, Go to your settings tab, click comments, then scroll to the bottom, enter whatever address you want for the Comment Notification Email (this one doesn't have to be the one you sign in with, either.) Then click Save Settings.

If you're using the new Blogger interface, go to Settings on the left, then choose Mobile and Email (still on the left), then enter the Comment Notification Email. Whatever email works for you, regardless of what you sign in with.

Piece of cake, right? Any questions?

Do you comment to comments via email ever? If so, help me try to talk everyone into enabling their email in the comments. Then I don't have to speak for you when it comes to the whole non-nefarious uses thing. :)



33 comments:

Cherie Reich said...

I do comment to comments via email, and I wish more people had it enabled, so I could do so. I'm right there with you on this. It's always sad when I can't comment back very easily.

PR said...

Oh I didn't know you could reply via email. If you do that the comment will not appear on the post? See now I've asked that question it seems stupid! :)

Universal Gibberish

Laura S. said...

Hi, Peggy! I comment in my comments. I have a lot of blog buddies who comment via email, though. It's great to have options!

Hope you're having a great week and happy A to Z!

Anonymous said...

I'm a Nerd and I approve this message.

Coleen Patrick said...

Ok so funny, but I just left a comment and got a blogger error. It doesn't like my comment system-lol. Anyway I just said mix it up--some response in the comments, some by email and some by visiting their blog :)

Donna K. Weaver said...

So sorry to hear you've been sick. Ugh!

This is an awesome tutorial. Well done! And I completely agree. I hate it when I can't respond.

JeffO said...

Bleah to food poisoning. Arguably the worst day of my life.

Annalisa Crawford said...

Ah, I've always wondered how to respond by email. I'll probably stick with commenting on the blog, but if I ever switch, it's easy - so thanks!

Hope you're feeling better now! I once gave myself food poisoning - you don't get an awful lot of sympathy when your cooking is bad enough to do that!

Elana Johnson said...

I do all my responding via email. It's so much easier. AND I set up a blog comments folder, so they all go to the same place, and I can plow through that sucker in like 30 minutes.

Hope you're feeling better!

Kimberlee Turley said...

I've been wondering how bloggers do this. Except I'd like it so that the comments don't get emailed to me, but I can hit the reply button below them and it automatically send my reply to them via email.

(Yes, I'm certain I'm asking way too much.)

Anonymous said...

Do threaded comments (in response to a comment) get sent directly to the commentator's email, or is it still necessary to access that person's profile to find their email address and respond that way?

S. L. Hennessy said...

I was trying (unsuccessfully) to explain this to someone over the phone. THANK YOU for posting this!

Angela Cothran said...

I'm SOOO glad you did this post!!! I have a few really good friends that I would love to respond to by e-mail (I'm talking to you Leigh Covington!) I hope everyone switches over!

Christine Rains said...

I respond to the comments right on Blogger. I like the direct reply button. My email should be clear... right?

Melissa Sarno said...

It makes me cry when people don't enable their email and I want to respond to them!

Jenny S. Morris said...

Food poisening, YUCK. I hope you feel better soon.

Haha, I'm laughing at Angie's comment. I always try to respond to Leigh and then realize she won't let me. I feel like it's a conversation when I can respond in email instead of on the blog.

Krista McLaughlin said...

Food poisoning - yuk that doesn't sound fun. Hope you are feeling better! I have mine enabled. Thanks for posting this for others! It really is nice to reply this way. :)

Tasha Seegmiller said...

I love this - now trying to figure out how to work this into some of my A-Z posts for people to experience the awesomeness of emailing comments. Great job!

Leigh Covington said...

Lol. i have officially fixed mine! Lol. this is awesome. you rock peggy!

Kristi said...

I had NO idea about this. This is beyond cool. Am off to figure out how to fix mine now. May have to reference this post again. LOL. :)

Jessie Humphries said...

I hereby promise not to do anything nefarious with anyone's emails! So enable! Now as for emailing all my commenters...I hereby cannot promise anything. I sucketh at that!

Romance Reader said...

Thanks for this post! Now I'm off to check if my email is enabled...

Riya

Valerie Hartman said...

Check - email enabled. I love that I am not the only one who didn't understand this blogging/email etitquete issue.

Love Joshua's comment => "I am a Nerd and I approve this message."

Request - If you haven't already written your L post, I need to learn about the Creating a Link feature.

Melissa Sugar said...

Thank you Peggy. This was a super helpful post. I am still using DISQUS so I have to learn how to comment from that dashboard, but I will definitely make sure that I change my settings tonight so others can reply to me via email.

I actually did this-what you just explained and all of my comments are emailed to me. So what's the problem? Well, I guess because I don't use blogger comments, it works differently. Every single email that arrives in my email from blogger that tell me I have a new comment, says that I have a new comment from myself. "Melissa Sugar has left you a comment on ..."

It is crazy. When I click the link to comments I can see them, but I don't know who they are from (unless I log into blogger).

Great article. Thanks for explaining with such easy to follow instructions

Carrie Butler said...

And those who have their Blogger profile connected to their Google+ account can change their preferences in "Edit Profile". :)

linda said...

I think emailing comment responses is a great idea! I've changed my profile to enable email.

That's why I love Disqus, though -- all the comments on my blog are sent to my inbox and I can moderate/respond from there, and I also get responses to my comments on other Disqus blogs in my inbox. But I guess it's not as convenient for people without Disqus.

Adrienne said...

I've just started emailing comment replies for this blogfest, and it really saves time! It's been a pretty even split between people who have email enabled and people who don't. This is a great post!

Jeremy Bates said...

i used to be on blogger for a year and i never knew that! can u tell me peggy how to get google friend connect back and working on wordpress? :)
jeremy

Paul Tobin said...

Fantastic post, am loving the a-z series. Keep it up.

Tracy MacDonald said...

This was so helpful! I've noticed others replying to me via email, but didn't know how to do it from my blog as I do get email notifications of comments. Who would have thought it was so easy. Also gives more accurate comment numbers.... Thanks Peggy!
Here's a question- how do you get that Email follow up comments button on the comment page?
A2ZMommy and What’s In Between

Sarah Tokeley said...

I like to make things difficult. I do both :-)

It's easy now that blogger allows me to respond to individual comments on my blog though. I type my response on my blog, then copy and paste it as an email response.

Z said...

Thanks Peggy!

This was great--sometimes comment threads wind up going directions that have nothing to do with the original post, and this way they stay more private--like an actual conversation! Who would've thought?

TerryLynnJohnson said...

Yikes - food poisoning? Glad you're on the mend!