Saturday, April 2, 2011

How To Reply to Comments with Email (Blogger)

This blog has evolved in ways that I never could have ever predicted.

I began it as a writing exercise.  I then made friends that encouraged me on a dream.  It then became a way to chronicle the little and big moments of our family's life.  I have become more interested in photography because of it....

I love the connections I am making.  People who live all over the country--all over the world!  It's awesome.  I never would have had the opportunity to meet some of these people if not for our blogs, but we share thoughts, ideas...this whole experience or journey called life!

This is what it's all about.

One time, someone who I do not know well, spilled out this whole heart-wrenching story to me and then apologized because they didn't know me well.  Words came out of my mouth that I really didn't even think of until I said them (has that ever happened to you?  It's happened to me three time and every time I knew who put them there!)  I told her, "God doesn't mean for us to go it alone.  He puts people in our lives so we can share it all."

That is how I feel about blogging--because of geographical logistics, we may never have met, but blogging gives us a way to connect that is so meaningful and powerful!

Some of my favorite bloggers, like Suzette at The Frat Pack + Me, started emailing responses to my comments and I loved it!  It adds a whole new level of personal connection.

Also, I often reply to comments, but I don't know if people return to read them--and face it, we are all so busy, we sometimes forget or just plain don't have time!

Last week, I followed Suzette's steps to unlocking this awesome feature of blogging.  In the last week, I feel as though my friendships with certain readers has taken a whole new awesome level!

I see that some readers have subscribed to my Feedburner Email feed, but that is not how you enable this feature.  Subscribing to the Feedburner Email feed just means that you will now get my posts sent to your email inbox rather than your reader.  If you want that, I am cool with it.  Likewise, if you don't want to share your email with everyone and just want me to use the email that is in there to respond, please let me know.  Also, if you just plain don't want to share your email, I completely understand, no pressure, it's all good!

I can only tell you about my experience with blogger, but I am pretty sure other blogging platforms allow for this as well.

First of all, I started a new email with the title of my blog: ourlifeinwords@gmail.com

I decided I wanted to keep it separated from my other email address because that box is always jammed full and takes me forever to get through.

Then I went to my Blogger Dashboard. I clicked on Edit Profile (upper left corner).

 I changed my email

and I checked the third little box that says Show Email Address.

 This will allow bloggers whose blogs I comment on to get this email address, otherwise it will say @ no reply.

 Then I went to the Setting Tab on my blog:


 I went in to Comments
and under Email Notification, I typed in the new email address.
Now, when I leave a comment, you can get my email address and reply.  Likewise, if you leave me a comment, I can reply to you via email!!  In some cases, sometimes, depending on the topic, this becomes a little back and forth conversation!  I <3 it!