You've Got Mail

I’ve been trying to streamline my blogging world.  It is so therapeutic on so many levels and I love, love, love that I can reflect and journal and commune with so many people as I go about my life.  Blogging is a great way to be in touch but sometimes it gets awkward.  When I get questions in my comments I am never quite sure what is the proper protocol for responding.  There are a number of options.

1.  Leave a comment in my own post and trust the person has subscribed to comments or will come back to look for a response.

2.  Pop over to the commenter’s blog (if they have one) and leave an unrelated response on their latest post.  I try to do this when I have time, but when I don’t have time it is so easy for those questions or comments to get buried under a whole wave of new emails or comments and then I become overwhelmed.

3.  And this is what I prefer, send them a personal email; 1.  IF they have a blogger profile (not posting anonymous obviously) and 2.  IF they have enabled an email address on their profile. 

Some time last year I created a generic email account specifically for blogging.  It’s prairieprologue@gmail.com and since it is generic and blog specific I reveal it under my profile pic in my blogger profile.  Not only can you open my profile and find my email address but it also allows you to “reply” to me from your own inbox when I leave a comment on your blog.  When my comment arrives in your inbox you can just hit “reply” and my email addy will pop up and you will be commenting to me personally, off blog.  It’s a WONDERFUL time saving device for sending a quick individual thanks or a hug or continuing conversations that you want to take off blog. 

It’s amazing how I feel a more intimate friendship with those women that I correspond with “off blog”.  We share more intimate words and prayers and exchange addresses for sending each other favorite little specialty coffees and chocolates, cards and family pictures. 

I find that only about 20 percent of commenters have assigned an email address to their profile.  I understand not wanting to post your main email for multiple reasons, but getting a generic email for your blogging profile is quick and painless and very helpful in cutting back time surfing around trying to find people and respond to them on an individual level.  Try it!  Try it for me, so that when I want to drop you a line, I can *wink*.   I can’t tell you how many times  I’ve hit “reply” to many of your individual comments to send you a quick little smile or hug and then groaned when “no-reply blogger” rears his ugly head in the return address slot. 

here’s the gmail url just to make it that much easer for you *wink*.