Wwohn.com : Involve visitors in discussions

Posted by Oeroek in maart 27th, 2008

Many weblogs offer the possibility to post comments. Not only does this improve the long tail in Google, it benefits to the communication with visitors and may draw visitors back to your website.

A discussion on your weblog should not be taken for granted. You need an interesting subject on which people have an opinion and are prepared to give a reaction. Moreover, interaction with your visitors may convert a new visitor in a regular visitor.

Take in mind that not all visitors will regularly come back to search new comments on earlier discussions. It is important to make the path back to your website as smooth as possible.

Luckily there are many ways to make your weblog into a frequently visited place for discussion.

E-mail updates for visitors

subscribe to comments One of the best methods to involve visitors is by providing them a subscription to the comments on a post.

With the Wordpress plugin subscribe-to-comments you can add a checkbox to your comment form by which a visitor can opt to receive e-mail updates if another visitor leaves a comment.

The Wordpress plugin also provides an unsubscribe link.

Comment feed

If your weblog software does not support this feature, make sure you have a comment feed. Visitors can subscribe to the comment feed and receive updates on new comments.

Please note that some comment feeds only lead to a feed of all comments in stead of the comments of a single post.

This weblog has a comment feed for every message. Look at the post “google analytics graph behind” and the associated comment feed.

Participate in discussions

You are a member of your own community, so participate in any discussion and help visitors where possible.

You could off course make several users and make a discussion yourself. I think however that this is black hat and may damage trust of your visitors in you and your weblog.

Promote active discussions

If one of your posts leads to a heated discussion, it is probably an interesting piece of work with an emphasis on the comments. If you see the same subject on another page, mention the interesting discussion on your own blog.

Also use social media and promote active discussions on your Facebook, Myspace or other social page. You may even use Twitter as Problogger also mentions.