I recently received this question from a new blogger:

How do you usually respond to a track back? Do you post another comment on your own blog? Would the author of the track back know it’s there? Do people usually carry on the conversation in the blog?

If someone comments on my blog, I write a comment back, I do this to let readers and potential commenters know that I’m interested in what they say, that I want to sue the blog as a forum for discussion. In my comment, I usually indicate which commenter I’m responding to. If a number of people have commented, I might write just one comment back to several. See the comments on this post for an example: http://www.closkey.com/mybrilliantmistakes/archives/000583.html

Sometimes, if a comment or comment thread is particularly interesting and the blog owner wants people to notice it, he might write another blog post that points out the comments in the previous post. Or he could add an update to the first blog post, but that’s less common, and might be a little confusing.

If someone comments on your blog, they might be using a tool like Christina Schulman’s Convo (convotracker.com) to know when other people respond. Or your blog might provide an RSS feed that they could watch. But ordinarily the commenter just has to come back and check.

If you get a trackback, which happens when someone links to your post from another blog, you don’t need to do anything to respond. You might go to the other post and see what they wrote, and comment back there if it makes sense. Maybe to say thanks or to continue whatever discussion is going on.