Don’t underestimate the value of having an active group of visitors leaving comments on your blog. After all, these people are providing a number of incredibly useful services for you. Most importantly, they are creating additional content for you, free of charge. They are also making sure that your blog is being updated more frequently, which is a definite factor in the major search engine algorithms. Beyond that, commenters who are highly involved in a discussion or argument may well share the link, building your organic search engine ranking and putting you on the road to effective viral marketing. So, how can you encourage more people to leave comments? Here are a few of the best plugins to encourage more comments on your blog that can be downloaded and applied quickly using all desktops and laptops.
OpenID Comments and Disqus. Both of these plugins do the same basic thing: They allow your readers to post comments with their OpenID. Many users and readers have an OpenID, but won’t want to sign up for a WordPress account just to say a few words about your latest entry. These plugins completely leap over that hurdle.
Twitoaster and Twitter Avatars. These tools are a great way to reach out to the community of people who tweet, encouraging Twitter addicts to get involved in your blog. Twitoaster allows users to leave a comment directly through their Twitter account. Twitter Avatars allows users to display their avatar in the comment automatically. In either case, you can take advantage of those intense Twitter cravings by your readers to get your blog comments rolling.
DoFollow. You can manipulate your code with this plugin, doing your commenters a major favor. As of June, 2010, the default code for comments adds a “No Follow” tag to all links left in comments. This means that leaving a comment with a link will not help with organic search engine rankings for the site that is being referenced. In addition to helping out the people leaving comments, using DoFollow will significantly increase the likelihood that those who are actively promoting their site will post a comment on your blog. Remember, if they’re leaving trash comments, you can always delete them.
CommentLuv. Discover yet another way to help your loyal commenters. This simple plugin automates the process of a track back, responding to someone’s post with a blog entry of your own. It does this by adding an automatic link to the last blog post from the commenter, as well as a blog entry title.
Top Commenters and Show Top Commentators. Both of these plugins help to make your most frequent posters feel good about their contribution to your blog by displaying their name, avatar, and a link to their blog in your sidebar. In addition to working more effectively than a gold star to brighten these people’s days, it can encourage a competitive environment where “the one with the most comments wins.” Having tools like these can also compliment the general sense of community that your blog can offer to readers and commentators alike.
