They comment, you email, they subscribe, life is good!

[A Clear Blogging Tip.]

Simple techniques still work best. What could be simpler than emailing some of the people who leave useful comments on your post today?

Here's a case in point - I just got the email below (my comments are on the right) from Lodewijk van den Broek after I commented on his Problogger -inspired post, "How to use Google Reader to effectively track your Comment Marketing" earlier today:

Here's how to put this Tip into action:

1. Get either TextExpander (Mac, $29.95 USD) or Direct Access (PC $39.95 USD) so you can just click a commenter's email in your blog, type "rpy" and expand that text into a full email reply [Not to mention lots of other blogging uses...].
2. Edit which post you are writing about.
3. Spend a few minutes - and I mean few - looking at the commenter's site for just one positive thing to connect on/discuss.
4. Tailor the email to what you find in #3.
5. Send!
6. Rinse, lather and repeat: I doubt Lodewijk needs to spends more than 10 minutes total on each of these emails - nor should you.

Reaching out in a personal and nice way to some of your commenters is a simple, powerful way of converting commenters to readers and in fact supporters. Give it a try today!

Comments

[Lodewijkvdb]

Thanks for the kind words. Actually I don't use any of the plugins, I just copy the e-mail address in a new mail, which in turn is based on a template with the basics. The template saves me time and typing errors :)

Usually it doesn't take me more than 5 minutes to do this, but sometime when I discover nice sites or blogs it takes me longer.

Commenting is usually a good way to get the attention of a blogger. Kind of like what you did. I had never been to or heard of your blog before, and now it's in my reader!

[Myo Kyaw Htun]

This is the effective way I'm going to try now! Thanks for the tip.

[Zac Davis]

I thought about doing this once, I never knew if it would actually work or not. I'll have to try this now. Thanks for the tip.