This article is about a phenomenon that has taken me by surprise - auto-responders for blogs.
I first encountered these when commenting on a couple of blog posts and when the first email arrived I was suckered in - I thought the blogger had noticed that I made an inciteful comment and had sent me a personalised email to encourage me to participate more.
When the second comment elicited a similarly boilerplate email welcoming me to their blog, I got a bit sceptical.
Please don’t think that this post is an attack on either StayGoLinks or Mr Javo, it is merely a discussion of the technology used.
The Shock Of The New
The first email piqued my curiosity - I almost replied - but as always with unsolicited emails, I decided to wait. Maybe I shouldn’t have, have you replied to one of these emails? Leave a comment and let me know.
The second email also ellicited a sharp spike of excitement but it reminded me of the (now deleted) first email. The text was different, but the meaning was the same - “Thanks for your comment, please subscribe.”
I did a little research, not much, but some and found that for WordPress, there is a plugin that automates this sort of thing.
It me left feeeling rather disappointed, and not a little naive. I was very close to being suckered - feeling suckered by the individual attention.
It’s Not Mainstream Yet...
Thankfully.
If this plugin should become mainstream, it’s emails will be marked as spam very quickly and that can only hurt bloggers.
That’s not to say that I don’t like being welcomed to your blog, just make the welcome personal. Bloggers are well aware of generic spam comments saying things like “That is a very inciteful post, I wrote about this before on my blog v14gr4.com”.
Keep it personal and build a relationship with the 2% of your readers that bother to comment.
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But it can be the start of a real conversation
As the author of StayGoLinks, let me say that it can be the start of real conversations, which often turn out well. If people reply, then they will get a reply back from me. It's only sent once to any e-mail address the first time you make a comment on any one of the blog posts. That's hardly spam in my book.
Cheers.