Here is an example list of the various ways a person can subscribe to your site’s posts.

• Email Subscription: Readers sign up for an email notification when new content is published on the website.
• Follow: There are many times of follows, adding the site’s activity to your social media stream. WordPress.com offers Follows with the option to get email notifications as well as the site streamed in your Blog Follows stream.
• Feeds: Feeds are the syndicated and distributable version of your content. People use feed readers to keep up with the latest activity on their favorite sites.

A subscription is different from a share. Sharing is a one-time event. The shared article information is not an act of subscribing to or adding the site to your social web stream of information. A subscription is not just support but a choice by the reader to keep up with that site’s activities.

Subscribers are your site’s fan club.

This tutorial will focus on the three types of subscriptions, email, follow, and feeds, to help you promote these subscription options on your WordPress site.

As you add subscription options to your site, check out what your site looks like through email notifications, follows, and feeds. When you design a WordPress Theme, it is important to design for all the ways a site will be viewed and accessed.

For example, the image to the right in this article is a screenshot of a post article on Mashable, a popular online magazine featuring tech news. The designer has incorporated social media sharing, sharing stats, and encouragement of social sharing and subscriptions into the design of the site title area. The little worm-like line to the right of the sharing icons is a trending chart. It shows the popularity of the article based upon the social sharing, showing you the possible creative options.

As you go through this tutorial, examine the traditional examples used to promote sharing and subscription options, but consider how to creatively incorporate sharing and subscriptions into the design of the WordPress Theme. If you are designing for the public with a WordPress Theme, remember that users will customize menus and widgetized areas with their own ideas on where and how to place these icons and links. Give them options but have fun with these as well.

Let’s go through each to look at how they work and some suggestions on how to feature them. At the bottom of the article is a short tutorial on how to create a Subscription Page to bring home all the site’s subscription options into one place.

Email Subscriptions

An email subscription is not a newsletter subscription. In WordPress, it is a subscription for a notification to automatically be sent to all subscribers when you publish a new post. Posts not Pages trigger an email notification, and only when the post is published not edited or updated.

There are a variety of email subscription WordPress Plugins such as the email subscription featured in the JetPack WordPress Plugin. These add a subscription option to your site’s design, typically in the header, sidebar, or footer areas. You may also create a subscription Page in WordPress with the registration form.

I will cover the specifics of creating a Subscription Page further on in this tutorial, however you may create a Page in WordPress specifically for email subscription registration and sign-ups in addition to a Subscribe Page.

To create a Page for email subscription registration only:

1. Go to Add > New Page.
2. Title the Page appropriate such as Subscribe by Email or Email Subscriptions.
3. Write an introduction explaining the purpose of the form, that by subscribing the user will get an email notification every time the site is updated.
4. If you are using WordPress.com, add the Blog Subscription Form shortcode: [blog_subscription_form] in the Editor. If using a WordPress Plugin, following the Plugin instructions for adding the email subscription form to the Page.
5. Save or Publish the Page and Preview it. Edit it as needed.

This creates an email subscription Page you can use to link to when promoting your email subscription.

To add an email subscription to a Widget-enabled area of your WordPress Theme:

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets.
2. Look for Follow Blog via Email and drag it to the sidebar.
3. Customize the form according to your needs.
4. Save the form.
5. Preview the form in your site’s front end view.
6. Edit as necessary.

Note that there are three views for the WordPress Email Subscription Widget. There is the view of someone not logged into your site or WordPress.com, the view of a logged in member, and the view of the Widget when the visitor is logged in and subscribed to the site. Depending upon the WordPress Plugin features, these may look different or the same, and may or may not be customizable.

Please note that WordPress.com confuses things by mixing up Follow and Email Subscription. They call email subscriptions Follow Blog via Email and Follow as Follow, then mixes the two up with different features. I’ve asked them to clarify this and hopefully an upcoming release of WordPress will do so.

Until then, when you Follow a WordPress.com site, that site will be listed on the Reader > Blogs I Follow web page within the global dashboard of WordPress.com. The latest updates from the blogs you follow come from their site feeds. If you would like email notification from these sites when they are updated, set your Manage Delivery Settings accordingly, turning your WordPress.com follows into email subscriptions.

Also note that currently WordPress.com members cannot change or remove subscribers to their sites. Their current policy is that if your site is public, email subscriptions and followers are free to register for notification when your site is updated. While WordPress.com takes step to prevent spammy subscriptions, they may still get in your list. For now, ignore them. There is nothing you can do to remove them and it does not hurt your site or SEO ranking.

If someone wishes to change their email notification settings and discontinue their subscription to your site, they will need to access their own Email Delivery Settings.

For more information on email subscription basics in WordPress.com, see:

• Email Subscriptions — Blog — WordPress.com
• Support — WordPress.com
• Following Blogs — Support — WordPress.com
• Follow Blog Widget — Support — WordPress.com
• WordPress.com Support – Manage Delivery Settings

Follow

There are many ways to Follow a site.

On Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking channels, a follow adds that user to your social stream so you may follow their updates and posts. You may add such follow opportunities on your own site. Remember, following is different from sharing. Sharing is a single action of helping to spread the word about a web page or topic. Following is a form of subscription, adding their publishing stream to yours to monitor.

Through the use of WordPress Plugins or the WordPress.com Publicize feature, when you publish a post on your site, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other social media sites are automatically notified with an excerpt announcement of your post with a link to it. Your followers on those services will see the announcement in their stream and hopefully share it with others, thus encouraging others to subscribe to your social stream.

If you have a Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, or other social media account, you may add links to those accounts to encourage people to subscribe to them. These may be text links or links wrapped around social media icons and graphics within the design and layout of your site. You may add these in a Text Widget in the sidebar, footer, or other widgetized area of your WordPress Theme.

WordPress.com members can add WordPress.com sites to their Reader > Blogs I Follow web page within the global dashboard of WordPress.com. The latest updates from the blogs you follow come from WordPress.com site feeds the member has followed.

To add a WordPress.com Follow feature to your WordPress site (see email subscription section of this article for a graphic of this Widget):

1. Go to Appearance > Widgets.
2. Add the Follow Blog (not via email) Widget to the sidebar or other area of your site.
3. Customize it.
4. Save it.
5. Preview the front end of your site to see the Follow Widget.
6. Edit if necessary.

The WordPress.com Follow feature has the option to add an email notification from these sites when they are updated. Set your Manage Delivery Settings accordingly, turning your WordPress.com follows into email subscriptions.

Feed Subscriptions

Feeds are the contextual or text-like version of your website content. Wikipedia defines feeds as “a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content” available by subscription. Feeds are often referred to as RSS or aggregation but RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is one of several types of feeds which include Atom and other XML code formats.

The best way to think of a feed is that it is syndicated or distributed versions of your content. Your content is not restricted to viewing only on your site from within a web browser. The feed allows it to be viewed in feed readers (aka news readers), aggregators, web apps, and mobile apps – anywhere the user wishes to consume your content in a format of their choosing.

Popular feed readers included Google Reader until Google officially announced it would be closing the Google Reader service as of July 1, 2013. Alternatives include Feedly, The Old Reader, Pulse, TinyTinyRSS, Reeder (Mac/iPhone), NetNewsWire, NetVibes, Flipboard (mobile), Google Currents (mobile), Zite (Mobile), Rolio, FeedReader, RSSOwl, GreatNews, Vienna, and Taptu (mobile). So far, Feedly is winning the race as most popular but Flipboard, Google Currents, Taptu, and other mobile-friendly, magazine style feed readers are gaining ground as we become more mobile in our information collection and monitoring.

Example of Feed Preview in web browser.

Example of site feed in Google Reader.

On WordPress, feeds are automatically generated. There is no need to promote them or add a third-party feed generator unless you have a specific reason and purpose. Fans may just add your basic site address to their feed reader and the feed will be automatically added.

If you wish to promote your site’s feeds, you may use the RSS Links Widget (not RSS Widget) and add it to your sidebar or other widgetized area on your site.

You may also wish to create your own feed logo or icon, designing it to fit into the site’s design. Many professionally designed sites feature customized graphics representing the various feed and subscription options. The HTML with the images and links around them may be added easily to the Text Widget and placed in the sidebar or footer area, or even added to the navigation menu.

WordPress Feeds

By default, WordPress includes feeds. Rarely is a third-party feed package necessary, though some use them to more accurate monitor subscriptions and feed access stats.

The default WordPress feeds (for WordPress.com and the self-hosted or managed version of WordPress) are:

• Posts (site wide) http://example.wordpress.com/feed/
• Comments (site wide) http://example.wordpress.com/comments/feed/
• Per Post Comments http://example.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/post-title/feed/
• Category http://example.wordpress.com/category/category-name/feed/
• Tag http://example.wordpress.com/tag/tag-name/feed/
• Author http://example.wordpress.com/author/author-username/feed/ such as http://example.wordpress.com/author/lorelle/feed/

The pattern of the link followed by /feed/ at the end of the link is fairly obvious and consistent throughout all default WordPress feeds.

Site Wide Post Feeds are the most commonly used, updating a feed reader with the latest posts (not Pages) on your site.

Site Wide Comments are rarely used as they generate a feed for all the comments on all the posts (not Pages) on your site. Some people like to monitor all the activity on their site through their feed reader, a form of one-stop information monitoring, thus add this to their reader. I’ve heard from some government agency representatives that they use this to monitor a site’s overall activity when it is under suspicion of illegal or suspicious activity.

Per Post Comments are popular with feed reader fans as they can follow the activity on a post they are interested in or waiting for an answer to their question.

Category and tag feeds allow a user to follow a specific topic of interest on a site. The New York Times is a good example of this as they offer a full feed for a specific area of interest (think category) as well as feed from specific areas of interest within that category (think subcategories) to help readers keep up with the information they need and not everything else going on within the site.

Author feeds are a great way for fans of a specific author on a multiple-contributor site to keep up with the latest updates from them.

Using Feeds Within Your WordPress Site

Feeds may also be incorporated into your WordPress site in a variety of ways.

Feeds in the sidebar or footer areas of a site can be used to feature your other sites or related or favorite and recommended sites, giving your readers the chance to explore related content beyond your site.

Your site’s category feeds may be included in a Widget to promote the most recent articles within each category or a specific category you wish to promote, acting like a mini table of contents to your latest posts by category in the sidebar.

Incoming feeds may be added via the RSS Widget on WordPress.com and all WordPress sites. To do so:

• Go to Appearance > Widgets.
• Add the RSS Widget (not RSS Links) to the sidebar or other widgetized area.
• Customize it by setting the color of the RSS logo and other customization options.
• You may choose from all posts and all comments. If you choose both, chose the option to show text and images or text only as images only does not distinguish between the two feed types visually.
• Save the Widget.
• View the front end of your site to check placement. Edit if necessary.

Feeds can be embedded into posts and Pages with third-party programs only on self-hosted or managed versions of WordPress. While there some ways to incorporate feeds into WordPress.com posts and Pages, it is the official policy of WordPress.com and their WordPress.com Terms of Service that feed streams are not permitted on posts and Pages due to the tendency for abuse. They are restricted only to WordPress Widgets.

With Google Reader ending their reign on feed readers, and many feed readers using their API to maintain their own third-party news feed readers, it will be interesting to see the future of feeds, so stay tuned.

For more information on WordPress and feeds, see:

• Understanding, Using, and Customizing WordPress Blog Feeds
• WordPress Feeds « WordPress Codex
• Feeds — Support — WordPress.com
• What is My WordPress Feed URL? – Perishable Press
• WordPress Plugins for Feeds « Lorelle on WordPress
• Do You Need Permission to Use Feeds
• Don’t You Know What a Feed Is Yet? Get To Know Your Feeds!
• Blog Exercises: Feed Readers « Lorelle on WordPress
• Benefits and Uses of Website Feeds
• Adding RSS Feeds to WordPress
• Playing with WordPress.com New Sidebar Widgets
• One Year Anniversary Review: What are Feeds?

How to Create a Subscription Page

We’ve explored all the different ways to subscribe to your WordPress site. Many of these involve cluttering up your sidebar with subscription links and images. In addition or replacing these, you may wish to create a Subscribe Page for yourself or a client.

A Subscribe Page features all the various ways people can subscribe and follow your site, keeping updated with the latest posts. The Subscribe Page may be featured in your main navigation and in a “button” on the sidebar, a call to action to motivate people to click through and explore the site’s subscription options.

To create the Subscribe Page:

1. Go to Pages > Add New.
2. Title the Page “Subscribe” or “Subscriptions” if you have enough space within your menu.

Add links or forms to your follow and email subscription options.

If you have a separate newsletter you send out regular to announce activities, products, sales, news, and updates to your site, consider adding the sign-up form here as well.

Find your feeds and add them in a list to help readers subscribe to the feed option of their choice.

To find your various feeds, go through this article to help you find all the various subscription options and make a list of them in a text editor.

For example, the standard format for a category link is http://example.wordpress.com/category/category-name/feed/. Change the domain name to your site and set the category name to match your categories. Category names with more than one word have a hyphen (dash) between the words such as web-publishing-tips.

Put these in a list. Consider grouping the various options with headings and text to explain them such as your entire site feed in one section, all your category feeds in another, and your most popular site tag feeds in another list.

If you would like to put the orange RSS logo next to your feed links, create one or find one from the many RSS/Feed images on the web. Ensure the image you are using is not copyrighted and is available for public use. The orange rounded-corner square has been accepted as the standard image representing most feeds. You may use that or be more creative by changing the color or shape while still maintaining the look and feel of the intention of the graphic.

There are many feed icon image packs you can download and experiment with for free. Here are some common and standard example images that are royalty free for usage on your site.

To create a text link to the feed, use the following example.

<a href="http://example.com/category/wordpress-tips/feed/" 
title="Link to WordPress Tips Category Feed">
WordPress Tips Category Feed</a>

To include an image with the text such as in a list of links featuring your various feeds:

<a href="http://example.com/category/wordpress-tips/feed/" 
title="Link to WordPress Tips Category Feed">
<img src="http://example.com/uploads/2013/03/feed.gif" 
title="Feed Image" class="alignnone wp-smiley" />
WordPress Tips Category Feed</a>

To feature a feed graphic alone linking to your feeds, use the following code example:

<a href="http://example.com/category/wordpress-tips/feed/" 
title="Link to WordPress Tips Category Feed">
<img src="http://example.com/uploads/2013/03/feed.gif" 
title="Feed Image" class="alignnone wp-smiley" /></a>

If you copy the above code, please remove the line breaks so the code is all on one line.

Note that many WordPress Themes feature a border or margins around images which can distort images within text. To set the margins to zero with no border, use the wp-smiley CSS class which should be included in all WordPress Themes by default to allow smilies or emoticons to be used within the text and not distort the text. The Theme designer may have used something else so create a smiley in a post and preview it, checking the source code of the web page for the class used to style the smiley.

Experiment with the look and feel of your Subscribe Page. Add images and graphics to spice it up beyond just feed icons. Keep the look and feel clean and easy for the user to find the subscription option they prefer to access your site.

An editorial calendar is critical for the online publisher and web worker today. In traditional media, an editorial calendar was the year planned out in advance on editorial topics, articles, themes, article series, and events. Today, the editorial calendar goes even further covering social media, marketing, advertising, and virtual and direct social interaction. Whether for the individual blogger or a company, an editorial calendar sets goals and deadlines to keep you on track.

Every business with an online presence should spend time every fall or early winter preparing an editorial and social media calendar. In general it begins with a list of all the events and holidays associated with the business, such as industry fairs, conferences, and meetings. Look for seasonal events and activities for timely topics. Then all advertising and social media campaigns should be added to the mix so everyone in the company is on track with deadlines and monthly activities and how to tie them into blog post articles and social media coverage.

The next step is the same for everyone. Dive deep into your site’s content topics, categories, and tags. Have you said all needing to be said on a single topic or is there more to add? Where are the holes? Start filling them.

You can schedule posts by the day or the week to keep things loose. The enforcement of the deadlines are up to you, but the better planned your editorial and social media calendar, the more likely you are to stick with it over time.

Here are some articles with tips and helpful advice on how to develop an editorial calendar for yourself or to help a client create one for their business.

• Blogging For Web Designers: Editorial Calendars and Style Guides – Smashing Magazine | Smashing Magazine
• How to Put Together an Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing | Content Marketing Institute
• How Brands Are Borrowing From Publishers’ Toolkits | News – Advertising Age
• The benefits of an Editorial Calendar to keep your community on track | Blaise Grimes-Viort
• The Dirt on Editorial Calendars « Brain Traffic Blog
• Can An Editorial Calendar Help Your New Year’s Resolution? | Textbroker
• How to Create an Informal Editorial Calendar for Your Blog | FreelanceFolder
• Timing is Everything: Why You Need an Editorial Calendar | Heidi Cohen
• Editorial Calendars: Where All Content Marketers Should Start
• Why You Need An Editorial Calendar For Your Blog | Outspoken Media
• How to Build a Blog Editorial Calendar Even If You Don’t Know Where to Start | @PushingSocial
• How to Create a Social Media Editorial Calendar – Search Engine Watch (#SEW)
• Create an Editorial Calendar in Four Steps by @lisagerber of Spin Sucks
• 5 Keys to an Editorial Calendar that Keeps Your Content on Track | Content Marketing Institute
• Editorial Calendars 101
• Editorial Calendar: Tips for Creating an Editorial Calendar | LinchpinSEO: SEO, Content, Design Agency
• Editorial Calendars: An Age-Old Collaborative Work | Nate Riggs is Social Business Strategies | Content Marketing and Social Media Consulting
• Using Those Special Months on Your Editorial Calendar
• Develop an Editorial Calendar for Your Blog [Day 12 - 31DBBB] : @ProBlogger

This is going around the web and it’s a powerful statement:

I am responsible for what I say.
I am not responsible for what you understand.

It’s a simplified version of:

I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.
Robert McCloskey

Yet, it goes much further.

How does this relate to social media and web publishing?

A while ago I ran across the Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose, a script written with Yahoo Pipes by Joseph Kingsley. If you want to track yourself, your blog, your brand, or any keyword or phrase across the web, especially by social media sites, this is the tool for you.

The Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose searches across Twitter, Flickr, Friendfeed, Digg, various search engines, and even includes blog comments. It creates a custom feed you can then add to your feed reader.

Originally created for public relations, advertising, and marketing tracking across the online social networks and media, this is a great way to find out what others are saying about you and your blog, your brand, or anything. I’ve been using it to track information on WordPress such as WordPress Tips, WordPress Plugins, and WordPress Themes, as well as my name, blog name, and URL and feedback from various blogs I work for and with.

To use the Social Media Fire Hose:

1. Go to Yahoo Pipes Social Media Fire Hose.
2. In the first form, enter the keyword, title, blog name, your name, or whatever you want to search for.
3. In the second form, enter the “fragment” you wish to have ignored, such as your blog’s URL. This removes your blog posts from the search results to avoid redundancy. You want to know what others are saying, not yourself.
4. Click Run Pipe.
5. With the resulting page, choose the method you would like to track the feed, by feed reader, email, or otherwise, and add it to your feed reader of choice.

In your feed reader or email, you can now track information across a wide spectrum of social media services and sources. You can even incorporate the feed into your blog to track all mentions of your blog or name around the web.

Why Should You Track Yourself and Your Blog?

It’s important to know what others are saying about you and your blog, isn’t it? If you want to be an active participate in the online social community, it helps to know how your online reputation and visibility is working. Got a media campaign going? A contest? Want to know how viral your blog content or campaign is? Then you need to track what is being said around the online social water cooler.

It also helps to be more responsive to potential or current clients. If someone is wondering how to get in contact with you and they twitter it, you can jump right up and get in contact with them. If someone references you as a resource, you can say thank you. If someone is saying unkind things, you can choose to respond or not, but at least you are aware of the noise.

It’s a challenge to monitor references to you and your blog via blog comments. The Social Media Fire Hose tracks comments so you can respond to them when someone mentions you or your blog in blog comments. That’s quick interaction and community building.

If you have a product or service, it is essential that you track the feedback from all over the web so you can respond and react or work harder to provide the answers the people need.

If you write about a particular subject or topic, the Social Media Fire Hose is a great way of tracking all mentions of the subject, helping you get the inside scoop or jump on an interesting article or post on the subject.

Combined with the Google Reader Preview Enhanced Greasemonkey Script (GPE) for FireFox and GreaseMonkey, which I covered recently in Power Blogging Tips: Comment on Blogs From Within Google Feed Reader, you can respond directly from your feed reader to the posts within the Social Media Fire Hose.

Well, you can respond to all except the Twitter posts. To respond to Twitter tweets, you will need to copy the Twitter user name and “at” them via your Twitter program. Or open their tweet in your browser and respond directly from there. Twitter doesn’t offer an easy response method through their feeds or tweet pages that I’ve found.

If you need to monitor the social around you, your blog, and your products and services, this is an ideal way to do so.

Related Articles

• The Real Hidden Value of Old Post Traffic
• Blogging Resources and Sources to Help You Blog
• Blog Resources: Researching the Research, Finding the Facts, and Seeking Supporting Evidence
• What Inspires Your Readers to Interact With Your Blog?
• The Challenges of Creating an Interactive Blog
• My Comment Count is Bigger Than Your Comment Count!
• Blogs Offer Communication, Information, and Connections During Disasters

Used by permission of the author: Tracking Yourself and Your Blog Brand Across the Online Social World « Lorelle on WordPress

• Creating Your Organization's Social Media Strategy Map – Beth Kanter: Nonprofits and Social Media
• Creating Your Organization's Social Media Strategy Map – Beth's Blog: Nonprofits and Social Media
• How To Develop a Social Media Strategy: A Roadmap for Integration — Very Official Blog
• The Conversation Prism v2.0 Brian Solis
• Develop a Social Media Strategy in 7 Steps | Conferences and Events | Social Media Consulting – Convince & Convert
• Forrester Research: P.O.S.T. Method
• Social Media Strategy Transit Map | Intersection Digital Marketing
• The 3 Types of Social Media Strategy | @NewCommBiz
• 5 Reasons Why Social Media Failed You | ReveNews
• Social Media Strategy from A to Z » Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg
• What’s Your Social Media Marketing Strategy? – Nicky Jameson

The Conversation Prism by Brian Solis and Jesse Thomas was one of the earliest models for helping to visualize the conversations that define the social web.

Created originally in August of 2008, it has been updated several times as social media networks and trends have changed.

The prism chart is a bit hard to see on a web page, so let’s break it down into digestible parts.

Inside the Chart

The original version one and two of the Conversation Prism spelled out strategies for business communication and the social web. It bears highlighting as part of our conversation on marketing within the social web.

Version 3, shown at the top, removes the center strategies, focusing totally on listening. Many businesses don’t “get” what listening really means when it comes to the social web.

The Brand is the core of the circular chart representing the end goal: marketing the brand. From this, all things branch out as the goal must be served by the actions within the social web.

Wrapped around the inner Brand circle is a ring, called a halo, listing: Observation, Listening, Identification, Internalization, Prioritization, and Routing. These are the definitions of observing, listening, or participating in social media.

The next halo represents the “intersection of all public facing departments,” which is the business departments or titles to create a social media Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategy. They include Customer or Product Support, Product and Sales, Marketing/PR, Community, Corporate Communications, Crisis, and Support.

Halo three is described as the completion of the conversational workflow powered by “continual rotation of listening, responding, and learning online and in the real world.” It is represented by ongoing feedback and insight, participation, online and real world relationships and communication.

The outer part of the circle highlights the specific social media services sorted by subject matter and interest such as Questions and Answers found through Quora and LinkedIn, and Wikis with Wikipedia, TWiki, Wika, and other wiki-based sites and services.

This chart and others are available through The Conversation Prism Store.

Source: Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment (PDF)

The Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment was created by the Air Force Public Affairs Agency’s Emerging Technology Division to create a flow chart path for responding to comments in social media and blogs. While designed for blogs and blog comments, it works across all social networks and online and off-line communications. It’s caught the attention of the social media industry as a solid strategy that businesses should consider when training their staff handling web communications and marketing and establishing clear communication guidelines.

The chart is divided into four areas: Discover, Evaluate, Respond, and Response Considerations. In reality, it covers three areas, Discovery, Evaluation, and Response, as Response Considerations are part of the evaluation.

In general, the chart explains comment responses:

1. Before responding, consider the source of the response and their attitude and objectives.
2. Decide how to respond based upon the attitude and objectives of the commenter.
3. Write the response in consideration of tone, influence, timeliness, transparency, and sourcing (justification and evidence).
4. Evaluate response and continued conversation, if any, for future considerations and actions.

Among the response options are to monitor only (let the comment stand but take no immediate action), respond with facts to fix the commenter’s falicies or support the original position, respond with a solution to rectify the situation and restore calm and reasonable perspectives, and to reinforce your position positively by “sharing success” and restating your story and mission.