Increasing Interactivity on Your WordPress Blog
Increasing interactivity on your blog leads to more subscribers and increased traffic. This can be done with a combination of good content, plugins and the correct settings. Allowing and encouraging comments on your blog is the easiest way to grow it into a community-like atmosphere and keep people coming back to read and possibly continue the conversation. Setting up your WordPress blog to easily allow commenting on posts is the first and easiest step, writing the right type of content to entice comments is the hard part.
First to allow commenting on your WordPress blog check your settings. From the dashboard go to Settings or Options. Within the general settings look for the Membership settings. Make sure the box is not checked next to Users must be registered and logged in to comment. I don’t know about you but if I need to register on a blog just to comment I will probably not take the time. While there I suggest not checking the Anyone can register box, unless you want people to register to post on your blog.
Next click the Discussion menu and make sure the Allow people to post comments on the article is checked. I also would not check the Comment author must fill out name and e-mail as well as the Comment author must have a previously approved comment boxes. People want to see their comments immediately and waiting for them to be approved will reduce the chances of them making any more comments.
For your own good I would hold or moderate any comment with more than two links in it. Actually two or more links in a comment is a sign of a spammer, so be sure to have a good comment spam plugin. Akismet works pretty well for most but if it is letting some comment spam get through then try another like Spam Karma.
The WordPress plugins I suggest are for follow up on comments, one is Comment Relish, that sends a commenter a “Thank You” email for the comment. Another WordPress plugin is Subscribe To Comments, that will subscribe the commenter to the posts comments and send them an email when a new comment is made on a post they have commented on. There are other plugins available for polls and such but I have found that comments and the discussion on posts are what get most people coming back.
Now that you have your settings ready you have to try to encourage the actual comments and subscribers. This is the hard part for most including me. As of late I have reduced my posting here considerably due to burn out, bloggers block and other obligations. I try to encourage discussions with my WordPress Guides and people sometimes have questions about the instructions I post. How you encourage the discussion on your posts is up to you. You can flat out ask questions, or post something controversial, like a political or religious opinion. Joining and contributing to forums that are related to your blog is another way of increasing traffic. Just be sure to put a link to your blog in the forum signature.
Now that I have shared how I try to encourage interaction on my blogs how do you do it?
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Sorry but due to the spamming of a few all comments are moderated and will appear when approved and all drive-by comments will be deleted!
Comments
Ending the post with a question is what I use most frequently. I also try to respond to comments as much as possible, but with the increase in comments, this can be really time consuming.
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Don’t you think that “Comment author must have a previously approved comment boxes.” will increase spam comments as all comments will be published without your notice?
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Not really Fredrick as long as you have have a good spam plugin setup.
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Thank you very much for posting this guide. I am very pleased to have found your blog and I also have subscribed to your RSS feed.
Thanks again for great guides.
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I am the same way. There are blogs that I found really interesting and I’ll write a very long comment that I think will be a positive addition to the conversation and when I click “post”…. must be logged in?
Forget it. I won’t take the time.
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Drive-By comments will be deleted! Like "Thanks for sharing", "Nice post", or any other text that doesn't contribute to the discussion. If you ask a very specific question about your particular WordPress theme's code, it will probably be deleted. I can fix your WordPress site but for a price. If you ask a question like "Why don't my blog work right", it will be deleted. If you ask a question about your WordPress site without a leaving a link to it, it will be deleted. The point is to ask questions and or comment on the the actual content of the post, and to please use some common sense. All comments are moderated. Thank you.