Have you ever missed a blog comment? From your reader’s perspective, there’s nothing quite so frustrating as to ask a question on a blog or make a comment only to have it ignored. It’s certainly no way to conduct business or build relationships. The problem is that if you have an active blog and presumably an active business, managing blog comments can be overwhelming. There are people who have a full time job managing and responding to blog comments. When you only have a few minutes available each day how to you make it happen?

Get Mobile

Do you have to log into your WordPress account to see if you have any comments? If this is the case then it’s time to step up your game. You can easily have all of your blog comments sent to your email.

And if you use Gmail or another email program that makes it easy to sort and label messages then you can have every comment sent to a unique folder. From your phone or your computer, once a day you can check your email, open that folder and respond to all new blog comments.

Set Limits On Your Blog Comments

Finally, one reason many people tend to avoid responding to blog comments altogether is because they’re nervous. People tend to push the limits online. They may even be negative. They can ask for more information than you want to provide. Please see my post on how to connect with your readers.

You don’t have to stick your head in the sand and ignore your comments. Simply create hard and fast rules about what you allow on your blog and how you respond to those who push the boundaries. You might go so far as to write a template post for each type of challenging commenter you come across. For example, for the people who want free advice you might direct them to your email list or entry level product or service.

Install a Good Filter

One of the reasons a blog comment may slip past you is because it gets trapped in the midst of a ton of Spam. Let’s face it, even unpopular blogs receive dozens if not hundreds of spam comments each day. How can you identify all of the real comments when you have to sort through hundreds of messages? You can’t. You’ll inevitably miss someone. The key is to install a good spam filter. Askimet is the standard WordPress plug-in that most people use. However, you can take it a step further. A good CAPTCHA plug-in can help cut down on your spam and thus improve the likelihood that you’ll be able to easily identify every real comment.

Because I use WordPress, my preference for stopping spam on comment forms is to use WPForms. WPForms makes it incredibly simple to stop email spam from making its way into your inbox. This alone improves security and the leads you get from your site. Sometimes it is both that spam forms. They do this by crawling websites and sneaking in to send messages through contact forms on WordPress. So, for a simple spam prevention method, the WPForms anti-spam token will work great for you.

How to Add the Anti Spam Token to Your Contact Form:

First, edit your form to open it up in the form builder. Then go to Settings » General.

Scroll down to the bottom and check the Enable anti-spam protection checkbox. Then just save your form and that’s it!

If you see the old honeypot spam prevention option in the settings, simply check the newer Enable anti-spam protection option next to it.

There’s a further in depth tutorial you can check out on the WPForms website.

Why the Comments and Numbers Matter

Keeping your blog spam free will help you to keep it clean and running smoothly. It frees up more of your time so that you can do more of what you love – creating! But why should you keep track of your numbers and stats? With the numbers you can tell how many people are visiting your blog, what they’re reading, where they came from and more. You can determine through statistics how many people come to your site and “bounce” off, and how many stick around to read more. Plus, if you have your analytics set up right, you can figure out how many you’re converting to subscribers and how many of those because customers.

Here are some numbers you’ll want to look at:

* How Many Visitors – This is pretty self-explanatory, but it’s a good indicator if your diligence is working or not. If your number of visitors is steadily moving upwards then your content is doing its job.

* How Many New Visitors – Knowing how many visitors are new is also an important number to notice. This helps you know if you’re getting a rise in notice and a wider audience.

* Where the Visitors Came From – This is an important metric, because if you have more visitors from one place over another you can then put more effort in the place that is converting.

* How Many Repeat Visitors – Having repeat visitors can be a good indication of having content that readers want to consume. If you have low repeat visitors, you may not be converting well or re-targeting visitors well.

* How Many Visitors Bounce Off – Most blogs have some bounces but if you have a super-high bounce rate, it can be a sign of poor targeting.

* How Many Visitors Stay to Read – Look at how many people read your blog posts, and what they’re reading. Create more content that they like to read.

* How Many Visitors Comment – This ties in with the importance discussed here so far regarding the importance of clean comments and engagement. Engagement is a great sign of good social media marketing and if you don’t have enough, do what you can to get more.

And the two most important numbers of all:

* How Many Visitors Sign Up for Email Lists – One of the points of driving traffic to your website or blog is to get email subscribers. And this has everything to do with how well your contact forms are working. You should do what needs to be done to collect as many targeted subscribers as possible, because email is where you’ll earn repeat readers and build relationships.

* How Many Subscribers Convert to Clients – The other number that is essential to know is how many subscribers convert to clients. This will help you know if what you’re doing is working in the way you hope.

If you don’t know this information, it’s hard to know if what you’re doing is working. If you really want your blog and the comments you get to exceed your own expectations, then looking at these numbers and responding with appropriate actions will make all the difference.

Blog comments are not only a good thing, they help you to grow your blog and your business. It’s a connection to a reader and potential customer. It’s an opportunity to build a relationship. And your contact form is incredibly important – you want people to reach out to you and connect with the work you are doing. Spam of any kind can slow you down. Don’t miss an opportunity because your technology, systems, or fears get in the way!