Part of the guide: Blog Traffic
Come on, the WordPress comment system kinda sucks. It’s very basic, quite frankly ugly, and gets very little use. If you’d like drastically more comments and user activity, you need to improve the WordPress comment system. I’ve been playing around with plugins, tools, and systems that supposedly boost comment activity for years. Very few have worked, but here are the ones that do:
In this guide
1. Comment Luv
Comment Luv is one of the more popular plugins for the WordPress comment system. It’s been around for years and because of its powerful features as well as good marketing; everyone uses it. Essentially, what it does is allow commenters to leave a link to their LAST blog post. When a user selects the comment luv box located directly below the WP comment “submit” button, it brings up a list of their most recent blog posts. Automatically selecting the most recent post but allowing you to choose which post you want to link to. Very simple SEO/exposure incentive for blog readers.
2. WP Threaded Comment
Another cool, useful, and interactive plugin for increasing activity and building a community. WP Threaded Comment allows blog readers to comment on other readers’ comments hence “Threaded”. Packed with a bunch of options and features; this is a must-have plugin for any blog serious about building a community. It allows readers to comment on each other’s comments in a nested way, therefore making them able to communicate with each other easily – plus creating a sort of forum feel.
3. Subscribe To Comments
Subscribe To Comments is an extremely simplistic plugin that allows commenters to subscribe to other comments. By clicking “Subscribe To Comments” when posting their own, they’re instantly subscribed to any other comments that get posted on the post they commented on. In other words, whenever another comment is posted after theirs, they’ll get an email about it. Personally, I don’t use this plugin, because I think another plugin coming up is more useful and does a better job. But it’s really personal preference.
4. Top Commentators Plugin
This plugin is again; a great community builder. It adds a little competition to your comment system by adding a widget to your sidebar. The widget displays a short list of the top commentators, with links to their sites and comment count. This encourages readers to comment and to compete with other readers to be in the top commentators widget. Being in the widget means they get site-wide links and massive exposure (supposedly lol).
5. Disqus Comment System
The Disqus Comment system is a fully-fledged comment system, an alternative to WordPress; it replaces it. With something crazy like a million downloads; it’s popular to say the least. I’ve played around with alternative comment systems and decided to stick with WordPress. However, if volume is what you’re after then Disqus is definitely for you. For some reason it gets a lot more action than the WP comment system; maybe it’s more social in appearance; who knows.
In Prosperity,
David Wood
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Comments (carried over from the previous site)
RCONNORIII, August 23 2012, 14:45
Disqus is my favorite and I hope the last post will be added soon like what Comment Luv has. Have a great day on purpose!
gpartners, August 23 2012, 15:13
Excellent information. Thanks for spending the time. Genuinely enjoyed the post.
veganlogy, August 23 2012, 15:45
Hi, after I changed to Disqus, my website’s comment became less and less. Besides, when I use Disqus as a comment system on other websites, will it consider a backlink for me? (I don’t think so, since I have been commenting around but don’t see any).
Thanks.
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Let’s just say what CommentLuv actually does: it’s a link exchange dressed up as a comment box. You leave two sentences, but really you’re here to plant a link back to your own site. Fine, plenty of blogs run on that trade, but calling it ‘community building’ when the community half the time never comes back is stretching it.
We called this link-bait commenting back in 2009. Same plugin, different name. Filled the comment section fast, then Google quietly stopped counting those links a year or two later.
Looking at it as a process: traffic in, post read, comment submitted, subscriber or repeat visitor out. CommentLuv and the top-commentator widget both sit at the same stage, the submission incentive. Neither one touches the earlier stage, whether the post was worth commenting on in the first place. Optimize the wrong stage and you just get more low-value comments faster.
Gail’s right that the incentive is the link, not the conversation, and I’d want to see it separated out properly before crediting the plugin. A blog that’s already popular enough to get comments will get more once you make linking easy. That’s not the plugin creating engagement, that’s the plugin capturing engagement that was already there. Correlation dressed as a feature list.
Raj’s point about capturing existing engagement versus creating it is the more interesting question buried in here, because it applies to threaded comments too. A forum works because the conversation is the product. A blog comment section works because the post was the product and the comments are the exhaust. Threading them just makes the exhaust more readable, it doesn’t turn readers into a community on its own. I run a bike shop forum on the side and the difference between the two is night and day even with identical software underneath it.