10 WordPress Plugins for Encouraging Comments On Your Blog
Blog comments are often thought of as a measure of engagement amongst the blog readers. People like to join in the conversation that is going on within the comments. If you have a new blog it can be hard to get started so here are 10 WordPress plugins that can help. Where possible, I have linked to equivalents for other blogging platforms.
1) DoFollow Plugin
By default, WordPress marks all links (including trackbacks) within the comments section as “nofollow” which means that the Google spider does not follow those links. If you install a plugin that removes this tag, then every time somebody leaves a comment on your blog they get a useful backlink to their site. This does have its downsides of course - it also attracts more spam comments.
There is more than one do-follow plugin to choose from, Dofollow simply strips the nofollow tag from all links in the comments. If you want more control, Lucia’s Linky Love is a little more selective over which nofollow tags are removed. It encourages the blogger to set a minimum number of posts that must be set by a commenter before the nofollow tag is stripped for them. It will also leave nofollow on comments left on older posts.
The two plugins above are specific to WordPress but it is also possible to remove the nofollow tag from Blogger, Typepad and Moveable Type blogs.
2) Top Commentator Plugin
This is a method that I use here on this blog. It is a widget that shows the people who have made the most comments within the specified time period. You can select how many people to show in the list and what the time period is. My widget resets itself every month giving newcomers a chance to get on the list and I show 10 people.
The links in this widget are dofollow and they stay there for the duration of the timeframe as long as that person is not dropped off the list by another commenter. Because the widget is installed site-wide, it creates a semi-permanent link from the blog home page.
There are several plugins to choose from, I use one by Nate Sanden and if you go for that one, be sure to check our Wayne Liew’s tips on it.
For Blogger users, Omar Abid shows you a little script that can achieve the same thing.
3) CommentLuv Plugin
CommentLuv is a plugin I began to explore recently and I really like it. Basically, whenever another blogger comments on your blog, the plugin will search their website link for an RSS feed and try to extract their latest blog post and then link to it at the end of their comment. The link is nofollow but that can be turned off by one of the plugins mentioned above.
4) Most Commented Posts Plugin
Most blog themes have sections where you can highlight special content. If you scroll up on this blog you’ll see that at the top I have a Useful Posts section, Recent Posts and a block advertising my ebook. Another usage of one of these areas would be to show the most commented posts. This can encourage even more comments to the posts. Of course, you need to have a few comments to get started with this tactic.
5) Recent Comments Plugin
If you have a few particularly insightful commenters, you highlight their comments with the Recent Comments plugin The benefit of this plugin is that it actually shows a snippet of the comment text itself, rather than just a link to the person who made it. So this really encourages people to think about what they post.
I’d say the biggest downside to this one is that it takes up a lot of screen real estate and depending on your blog style, can make it look a little cluttered.
6) Subscribe to Comments Plugin
What can happen a lot with blogs is that somebody reads a post, is inspired to comment and then forgets all about that post as they move along to the next one or even to the next blog. The Subscribe to Comments plugin allows the commenter to choose to be emailed when a new comment on that post is made. This is particularly useful if the commenter has asked a question of you.
One tip - by default, have the checkbox switched OFF otherwise all your commenters will start getting emails every time a new comment is made and that is a fast way to get you into the spam filter!
7) Threaded Comments
Once you start getting conversations happening within the comments it can get a little messy. Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin allows users to explicitly reply to each other and shows the comments in a nested fashion like you would see in a forum perhaps.
Another benefit of this plugin would arise if you tend you get asked many specific questions by your readers. Courtney Tuttle is a big fan of this plugin and uses it extensively to do answer his readers questions.
8) Gravatars Plugin
If you’ve been around a few blogs you’ll see that there are various ways of getting an avatar for yourself. This plugin attempts to grab the avatar from services such as MyBlogLog and show it next to the commenter name. I have just installed it on this blog to see how it performs.
The advantage is that you get to put a face to a name which is nice for you and for your readers it helps them to brand themselves. One potential downside is that it might slow down the loading of your pages. Now if only I could figure out why my own avatar isn’t showing I would be more enamoured with this plugin!
9) Custom Smileys Plugin
Depending on the kind of blog you have, you might find it fun to allow users to put their own little smileys in their comments. This is just a fun thing of course but if your blog is the right fit, it can allow your commenters to enjoy the experience a little more.
10) Edit Comments Plugin
When you write thought provoking posts you want to allow your readers to reply with thought provoking comments. It can be really annoying for them to write out a nice long comment, submit it and then realise that they put a typo in there. This plugin will allow your commenters to edit their comment for a short time after posting.
Some General Commenting Tips
First of all, don’t go crazy and install all of the plugins listed above as that can make your blog look unnecessarily cluttered. Pick a few that you think could work with with your style of blog and test them for a little while and then evaluate.
Once you’ve started to see more comments being made, you will inevitably see more spam comments too. I have recently surpassed 10,000 spam comments and I am now getting several hundred every day! If I didn’t have a good spam filter in place I’d go a little mad!
There are a number of plugins that can automatically filter a large number of these for you. I use Akismet which comes with WordPress by default, but others also swear by Spam Karma and Bad Behavior.
Once you’re getting all these great comments from your readers don’t forget to reply to them! Also, it can be nice to reward your commenters now and then with a mention in a blog post or a backlink. One thing that I do is have a look through the posts listed by the CommentLuv plugin and if I find a good one, I link to it in my weekly link roundup post at the weekend.
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Vicky
April 2, 2008
Hi Caroline: yes these are all good ones. I use most of them on my blog. There is one or two I haven’t figured out yet but will get there. :}
Vicky’s last blog post..Rocking Links