Posts Tagged ‘comments’
5 Ways To Add Enhanced Comments On Your Blog
So how do you measure success when it comes to your blog? One way to do that is by determining whether you are reaching out to people and getting them to engage in conversations on your blog. A weblog that does not get any comments is not necessarily a failure, but it’s certainly not a success either. If your posts don’t make people want to comment and participate in your community, then you’ve got trouble. In that case, you want to make sure you do more research and address topics that people want to hear about.
What if you are already getting a decent number of comments on your blog? If that is the case, you should try to provide your readers with even more tools to comment on your blog. Whether it’s allowing them to leave you a video comment or rate other people’s comments, giving people more tools can only help take your blog to the next level. If you are looking for ways to enhance your blog’s comment section, here are 5 services that you should try:
Disqus: one of the most flexible services around that takes over your comment section on your blog and makes it possible for you readers to post video comments, connect to your blog via Facebook connect, and do a whole lot more on your blog. It works with the most popular blogging platforms which is a plus.
JS-Kit Echo: one of the best third party comment systems around. It not only comes with an advanced comment editor, it allows your readers to post more dynamic comments to your blog. The service is growing fast and has a bright future.
Intense Debate: a nice alternative to Disqus and Echo. It’s currently being used by a lot of Wordpress bloggers. The fact that the developers have opened up the platform to others means you are going to get a lot of enhancements through third party services.
Backtype Connect: a social media and conversation search engine that lets you know what people are talking about (based on your URL or article). You can install it on your Wordpress blog to let you users find out about the conversations going on about your content in the social media.
Facebook Connect: if you don’t want to mess with your blog and add services such as Disqus to enhance your comments, the least you can do is add Facebook Connect capability to your blog. The service can help you build a more solid community and take advantage of Facebook to go viral with your content.
These services may not improve the quality of your content, but they certainly do improve the quality and quantity of conversations on your blog. What more can you ask?
Manage Your Blog Comments With Intense Debate
If you have been following this blog, you have probably noticed that I have been using Disqus to manage comments on this blog more effectively. Disqus is a great blog comment management system but it’s not the only service you can use to manage comments and reduce spam on your blog. Intense Debate is another powerful blog comment system that should be considered by anyone who’s using Wordpress on her blog.
Intense Debate is very easy to install. All you have to do is create an account and download the Wordpress plug-in to start managing your blog comments. If you have a blog that already has a lot of comments, you should import your comments just to be on the safe side. Here is where things get interesting. Intense Debate comes with a lot of options. You want to make sure you choose the ones that protect your blog the best against spammers.
If you are planning to use Intense Debate to create a real community around your Wordpress blog, you should pay attention to Sync WP Comments feature. You do want to import your comments into Intense Debate to get the conversation going on all your posts. You also want to sync your WP Post Data to make sure all the changes you make to your blog are reflected on Intense Debate too. As far as comments for mobile devices feature is concerned, you should stick with Wordpress for now as Intense Debate is still not compatible with all mobile gadgets.
Overall, Intense Debate is another cool comment management service for Wordpress. It’s free and very powerful. I still would like to see video/audio comment integration on Intense Debate. Other than that, this is a solid solution to help you moderate your comments and catch spammers before they can do your blog any harm.
Your take: which one do you prefer, Intense Debate or Disqus?
How To Bribe Your Readers For Comments
A few days ago, I talked about how you can go about getting more comments on your blog. If you are suffering from lazy-readers-syndrome, there are a certain things you can do to get them to comment on your blog. Commenting on other blogs may not look that difficult, but a lot of folks don’t lift a finger without having some sort of encouragement. If you are dealing with these folks, you need to break their habit by giving them encouragement to get involved and engage with others in your community for the betterment of your community.
Here are a few things you can do to get folks to comment on your blog:
- Giveaways: the best way to get comments on your blog. You can always ask companies to sponsor giveaways on your blog. But if you have no success there, you can always buy a couple of cool gadgets and give them away in return for folks linking to you and leaving comments on your blog. You can also ask them to follow you on Twitter. Make sure your prize is something useful. I have had a lot of success with $25 gift certificates from Amazon, but you can give more or less. It never hurts to test.
- Products: if you have a product that you afford to giveaway, you are golden. People will jump through the hoops to get their hands on a freebie. Make sure your product provides some value.
- E-book: if you have written an e-book that you afford to giveaway, you can use it to attract lots of comments and traffic. Make sure you promote your work enough in your e-book to make it all worthwhile.
- Coupons: if you have a coupon that can save your reader $$$, you can get a lot of comments by giving it away. It really comes down to how much your readers can save by using the coupon. The more you giveaway, the more tempted your audience becomes to comment.
- Premium content: you may have one of those hybrid blogs that include both free and premium articles. If that is the case, you can increase user participation on your blog by giving away some of your paid articles.
- Membership: everyone likes to be a part of exclusive club. If you have a membership club that can provide value for your readers, you can get lots of comment by dangling membership to your club in front of your users.
- Limited Time Offers: it’s one thing to give away an e-book or a product to folks who leave a comment on your blog. It’s another thing to give your audience the impression that they have only a limited time to take advantage of your offer. That creates the sense of urgency that can get your more comments in a short period of time.
The rules are pretty simple here. As long as you have something that is of some value to others, you can give it away in return for user participation. People may be lazy, but they love free products. You shouldn’t limit yourself to the above tactics. You an always come up with innovative ideas to get people involved. But if your audience is not ready to participate even after you have offered them freebies, then there is probably something wrong with your comment system. Make sure you promote your freebie, and you should be all set.
How To Get More Comments On Your Blog – Part I
Comments. Can’t live with them and can’t live without them. I am sure you have heard the complaints that some super-bloggers have about the amount of comments that they receive each day. But what those guys don’t realize is how many folks try so hard to get a handful of comments per each post. Why do comments matter? It’s very simple. You really don’t have a community around your blog unless you manage to get people engaged enough to comment on your posts. If you can’t encourage folks to leave comments and respond to your posts, then you must be doing something wrong. You are either providing too little value or your writing style is not stimulating enough.
If you are not getting enough comments on your blog, you may be suffering from one of the below issues:
- Too narrow niche: sometimes the problem is not your blog’s quality bur rather your niche. If you pick a niche that is too narrow, you may not have enough audience to get comments on your blog. If nobody’s searching for what you are writing, then you can’t expect anyone to leave a comment on your blog. In this case, you may need to broaden your horizon and go beyond your current niche.
- Too little traffic: you may have the best blog in the world, but if people are not finding you, you are not going to get comments. If you are slacking off and not promoting your blog as well as you should, it’s time to get down to business and promote your blogs heavily.
- Low quality posts: if you are getting traffic to your blog and still not getting any comments, you may want to look at your posts and see if you are providing enough value to your readers. Most readers appreciate useful posts and take time to thank you or comment on your posts. If they are not doing that, there is a chance they don’t find your posts useful enough.
- No call to action: Don’t be shy about asking folks to comment on your blog. Sometimes people just forget to comment and by mentioning that on your blog, you remind them to do just that.
- Not stimulating enough content: you know what sets apart Rush Limbaugh from some other conservative radio hosts? He knows how to convey information with his audience in an stimulating way. Don’t try to fit in the crowd. Stand out!
- Too difficult commenting process: sometimes the problem is not your content but your blog structure. If you make it too difficult for folks to post comments, there is a good chance they won’t. Don’t make folks register for an account or jump through hoops to leave a comment. Nobody likes that.
- Lazy audience: you may have the right blog structure and good content on your blog, but your audience could be too lazy to leave comments on your posts. Giving them an encouragement always help. By giving encouragements to your audience, you can tempt them to comment on your posts (see part II for more information).
Comments are not everything, but they are a good indication on how you are doing with your blog. Most top blogs get hundreds of comments per post. While you shouldn’t focus too much on getting comments (to avoid letting it affect your content’s quality), you should take time to encourage folks to comment and engage with others in your blog. If you manage to do that, you are going to have a stronger community, and your blog will be better for it.
Manage Blog Comments With Disqus
I have been managing my blogs on Wordpress platform for a few years now. I got started with Wordpress in 2004, and I have stuck with it, really not having any reason to consider any other platform. But Wordpress’ comment system leaves something to be desired. It’s not terrible, but you can manage things more effectively across the web by using third-party comment management services such as Disqus. Disqus is a super comment management system that allows you to keep track of comments on your site easily and even connect your blog to Facebook and Friendfeed as well.
There are many comment management solutions out there, but Disqus is a great one to consider if you own a Wordpress blog and are tired of jumping through the hoops to moderate your comments and build your own community. Here is why I am hooked on Disqus:
- Comment Ratings: you can rate comments. That can be done with plug-ins on Wordpress, but I rather Disqus handle it all.
- Comment Management Tools: you can flag comments, get rid of trolls, and handle threaded comments.
- Enable your visitors to become a real community: your visitors can track their comments, develop a reputation online, and get more involved.
- Mobile/Email tools: you can moderate comments from your phone or via e-mail. A nice feature to have.
- More comments: I didn’t pay attention to this at first, but folks who use Disqus are more likely to comment on sites that use Disqus. That’s just a no brainer. Disqus makes it so easy for folks to track what they have said, and how what said has been perceived by others. The old way of commenting is so 90’s.
- Facebook/Seesmic/FriendFeed Integration: Disqus allows you to integrate Facebook, Friendfeed, and video comments right into your WP blog. Now that’s cool!
There are probably many other reasons that you should use Disqus to manage your Wordpress comments. At the end of the day, Disqus save you time and makes you more productive. That should be a good enough reason.
