Get Easy Access to Your Blogging Comments

Bloggers love to get comments. It lets them know they're not speaking in a void and that someone else is reading their blog. But not all bloggers are seeing their comments as quickly as they arrive. The trick is to get your blogging comments emailed to you.

Here's how you set it up on Blogger:

After you log in to your Blogger Dashboard, click on the tab for Settings.

Then Click beneath that where you see the hyperlink for Comments.

Now scroll down almost to the bottom of the page where you find the option for comment moderation. Comment moderation allows you to review comments before you publish them on your blog. Most people select "always" and review every comment before publishing. I like to make things easy for my readers so I have opted to turn on moderation only for posts that are 7 days or older. I've read that spam usually occurs on those older posts.

Regardless of which you pick, you can receive email notifications to let you know a comment is waiting and needs to be reviewed.  Type the email address you want to use in the box for comment moderation. (Notice, if you choose never for comment moderation there is no need to include an email address because all your comments will be published automatically.)

Also, note the option for word verification. This is the little box that makes you type the squigly word to make sure real people are leaving comments. I have mine turned off. Again, I do that to make it easier for my audience to leave comments.http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=691016683378293851

Next, scroll down a bit more to the Comment Notification Email option.  Enter your email address here. This will let you know that a comment has been published on your blog.

If you use Comment Moderation for all your blog comments you might not want to use this option. If you do, you will receive an email to notify you that a comment needs to be moderated and again after it gets published.  You have to decide which works better for you.

How My Settings are Organized

I actually use two different email addresses for moderated and published comments. Most of my blog comments (95%) get published automatically so I have notifications sent to one email address just for that and I have a directory set up in Outlook to receive those blog comments.

Because I get very few comments more than 7 days after a new post I send those moderated comment notifications to a different email address. You can see two different email address in the images above to see exactly how I've set it up.  I do this so that I don't get confused between newly published comments and moderated comments that need a closer look. If they were all together in one directory I might get confused about which comments are new and which need moderation.

Get Notified Quickly

Add an email address to receive notifications so that you can be alerted to new comments quickly. Your readers will love you because you can respond to their comments quicker. And you will love it because you will know right away that people are reading your blog.

Let me know if you have any questions about getting set up or receiving notifications.