Comments are a big part of online marketing success. They affect how your site is ranked by Google, and how you are perceived by your viewers as well as other site owners. Comments are about engagement and networking, which are two brass rings in the quest for online success. The holy grail is quality content that sparks the comment fire in the first place. Here’s what you need to know to be a successful giver and receiver of comments.
Be a Giver
One of the best ways that you can begin to network online and draw the attention of other successful site owners (and their followers) is to leave comments on their posts. Dana Lynn Smith (aka The Savvy Book Marketer) has a wonderful guest post on BookBuzzr with tips for The Right (and Wrong) Way to Comment on Blogs.
Get Proper Credit
Most blogs that you will comment on incorporate commenting systems that show a thumbnail of you and connects to your online profile. That can lead folks directly back to your site, especially if you leave a particularly helpful comment.
But, there are so many commenting systems in use that you will need several accounts to ensure you are properly credited on all of them. Here’s a list with links to help you get started.
If you really want to keep things simple for yourself,
use the same email address for all of these accounts.
Gravatar – http://en.gravatar.com/ – This is the most basic and widely accepted online profile. Read my post Boost Your Site Traffic with a Gravatar for a quick how-to.
Google Account – https://www.google.com/accounts/ – This is also a widely accepted online profile, and there’s so much else you can do with a Google Account. See my post on how to create or update an account with the new Google Profile. The read Free Google Account Must Haves for Site Owners and Why Every Website Owner Needs a Google Account to ensure you max out on all the free and useful tools Google offers.
Disqus – http://disqus.com/ – This was one of the first enhanced commenting systems offered and is still going strong on many sites. When you click the Sign Up button, look to the right for a link to create a commenter account. You’ll then be asked to connect with either your Facebook, Twitter, or Google account. Then, look up in the right corner, hover over your name, and update your profile.
LiveFrye – http://livefyre.com/ – This is one of the newest systems on the block and is getting picked up quickly because it integrates all of your online presences. To get started, click the Sign Up link in the upper right. If you’re using the same email address for all of these, it will find you! But you can edit your profile anyway. Look for the Settings link in the top right after you get your account. (No idea why they didn’t put this under Profile.)
Comment Systems for Your Site
If you want more comments, make it easy for others to leave them. There are several comment systems for WordPress and each has it’s pro and con.
Standard – While the standard comment system that’s loaded by default with WordPress doesn’t have many whistles and bells, it is very easy for others to use by logging in with either their Gravatar or Google account. And, all of the comments are stored on your site’s database, which is a real plus for backing up and securing.
CommentLuv – http://comluv.com/ – This became one of the most popular comment systems because folks can sign in easily and it encourages more comments because each person is rewarded with a link back to the last post they made on their blog. Kristi Hines has a super post titled CommentLuv 2.9 – Guide for Blog Owners & Commenters on the benefits, and latest features with the most recent version of this system, plus how to set it up. CommentLuv is available as a WordPress plugin.
Disqus – It’s relatively easy to set up this comment system, and it does have a WordPress plugin available. It allows folks to sign in using their Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, or Yahoo accounts. And, it has extra widgets to display comments on your sidebar too. The one con is that the comments are stored on the Disqus system. If it becomes temporarily unavailable, so do your comments. And, if you switch to another comment system later, you’ll need a special plugin or tool to migrate comments to the new system. There are lots of tools available to migrate your current comments into Disqus.
LiveFrye – This new system just came out of beta testing in March, but it is catching on quickly with some heavily trafficked sites that have a very active community of commenters. There is a LiveFrye plugin for WordPress and is tauted as being super simple to configure. But, the drawback of that is, you can’t make it look or act much differently than the way it comes out of the box. Commenters can share their posts on their Facebook and Twitter accounts too. But, if they don’t have a LiveFrye account, they’ll have to allow access to their Facebook, Twitter, Google or Linkedin account with your site, which may turn folks off for a while yet.
Facebook – Yes, Facebook has it’s own comment system that fully integrates with Facebook profiles, but the reason that it hasn’t caught fire is because it doesn’t play well with others. You run it and it alone, or have a dual comment system. Not cool.
How are You Handling Comments?
Do you have a special comment system on your site? How’s it working for you? As a commenter, do you skip leaving a comment if there are too many sign-in barriers?
MaAnna is a geek who can still speak in plain English and mashes up her background in both the techie and artsy worlds to teach non-geeks, authors, artists, and other creative folks the ways of WordPress.
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I like to comment on other blogs… but I detest multi-step approval processes, especially those that require me to open another page, and/or sign in with a profile and/or do a captcha. (I’m looking at YOU, Blogger!) Invariably, I take the time to write a comment and then don’t have the right profile. Or I miss clicking something that I’m supposed to and the comment gets eaten. If you’re going to have all of those steps, at least set it up so that, if I accidentally skip something, it saves what I’ve already typed!! When it doesn’t, I just leave. Grrr.
The little check-box that says “Confirm you are NOT a spammer” isn’t bad at all.
I never mind leaving my name, email, and site — those are good for communication and traffic. But if you want people to comment, make it easy for them!!
(Clearly, I have some issues. You’ve hit a hot-button topic for me!)
Damsel, I hear you! I personally prefer function over fashion. And, the point of BlogAid is to make online stuff easy for non-geeks. I’m certainly not going to make it difficult for folks to say hey.
To keep abreast in my field, I have to read a lot of blogs. I’ve gotten in the habit of copying my comment to the clipboard before hitting submit, so if it gets gobbled up, it’s easy for me to start over. And very often, I’ll just leave a comment on their Facebook page, especially if that’s where I first saw the post. If they make it easy for me, I’ll leave comments in both places.
I do like CommentLuv, though, and am considering it for BlogAid.
Super informative article. You are building a wealth of high quality articles that YOU and others can readily refer to. Your writing style is easy to comprehend and your article references are relevant and not spammy! Keep up the fantastic work! I am a committed blog aid fan!
The Chief Blonde!
Thank you for your kind words and hanging out with BlogAid all over!!
Hi MaAnna!
This is an invaluable list of strategies and systems! Your posts are so helpful to us non-geeks. Today, you’ve helped me get a disqus account, finetune our Gravatar acct, and add a profile to a Google acct. Thanks so much for all you do!
Dee
Fantastic Dee! Glad it was so helpful. Being an old tech writer, I tend to document as I go. So, when I updated all of my profiles lately, thought that list would be helpful to others. And so it was! Thanks for letting me know.
Yeah, this is one of the first few blogs where I don’t see a flood of spam comments. This is the only reason I am taking the time to actually post a comment by hand. I love the “Check it if you’re human and not a bot.” thing that uses a Javascript that the spambot software doesn’t know how to use. Do you know if this also uses cookies in combination with the Javascript? I am seeing that blogaid.net is giving me a cookie that expires during this session. Is that cookie being part of the checkbox on here that’s asking me if I am a human and not a bot? If everyone is using this, I can just imagine how many anonymous lurkers will finally be able to come out and actually start contributing to blogs for the first time. In the past I was hesitant because I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time writing a message by hand only for the message to never be approved because the web site owner was so buried in spam comments. The check box here looks similar to the one called “GASP”. It’s not the same one is it?
The cookie should expire after the session. I’m actually surprised that your email address isn’t the thing that gets caught in the spam filters more. If it were pending, and that’s all I read, I might be tempted to delete it. But since you did take the time to post something relevant, I let it through. If it had been just “nice post” I most certainly would have kicked it out as spam. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment and helping others see of the things to look for that help curb spam, but don’t offer too many hoops for folks to jump through.