Blogussion » readers

How to Make Replying to Comments Easier & More Enjoyable

Alex — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 04:00:35 +0000

One of the most important things you can do after you have published your post is reply to the readers who have graciously left a comment on what you wrote. Unfortunately, it’s also something that many people don’t do, or do well enough. Maybe it’s because they get a lot of comments, and maybe they just don’t care. But let me tell you, it’s crucial you keep up with your readers the best you can.

Replying to comments is one of the greatest ways to build a community on your blog. It encourages more discussion, and it gives you a chance to get to know your readers, and for your readers to get to know you.

But over time as your blog grows, it becomes harder to keep up with all the readers who comment on your articles. So, you are going from replying to a small handful of comments to dozens and dozens every time. How can you keep up?

I do my best to keep up with any comment I get on my posts. I mean, it’s the least I can do. Sometimes I miss a few, and sometimes I don’t do a great job of keeping conversation flowing. But, I do try my best. And you should to, regardless of blog size.

I have been thinking about more ways to better keep up with replying to the comments I get here. I would usually wait a a day or two after the post has been published and then reply to them, but that’s just not smart! By that time, the discussion has always died out.

The purpose of replying to comments is not just so you look like a nice blogger, but so you keep conversation flowing and readers interested. So, I looked at my approach to doing it and decided I was all wrong.

I want to share with you some of my new strategies for replying to blog comments, and I hope you can take a look at them and figure out how to implement them into your own flow.

1. Schedule it With Similar Activities

I have been trying to make replying to comments one of the first things I do when I get ready for work. Since I schedule all of my posts to publish while I’m asleep, I wake up to new comments everyday.

Once I get ready to work, I decide to reply to comments when I reply to emails I also receive overnight. Grouping these two activities together really makes it easier since they’re so similar.

But go crazy with it. Reply to comments when you respond to tweets on Twitter, or when you’re reading others’ blogs and commenting there.

2. Have Fun!

Don’t make replying to comments a chore, make them enjoyable. As a blogger, you probably don’t get as much interaction with other people anyway (I kid, I kid), so use this time to get social and talk to your dedicated readers!

But the moment you start making it feel like you’re actually doing work instead of having fun, the less you will actually want to do it. So don’t force yourself to do it, just make it as enjoyable as possible!

3. Encourage Reader-to-Reader Interaction

A lazy way to take care of your comments is to get readers to reply to them for you! You still will want to get involved in discussions (and this may actually get you involved more than ever), but it’s still nice to see how strong of a community you will have.

4. Use Your Smart Phone

This is something I can’t believe I never thought of doing before. For many popular smart phone models like the iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and probably many others, you can find an application that will allow you to connect to your blog and manage some things.

Even if there’s no official application for your phone, you can still login to your blog through your phone’s browser and reply that way.

I am starting to do this with my BlackBerry and I find it very efficient since I get an alert every time I get a new comment and I can just reply to it once I see it.

How do You Manage Comments?

Maybe you have a blog that gets a few comments, or maybe you get dozens a post. I want to know, how do you keep up with them all? Even with the tips I suggested, it can still be tough to keep up with all of your blog comments.

So I want to know what you do, because I know I could still be better at it myself!

What are the best methods for marketing blog articles? – Wired Weekend

Alex — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 04:00:52 +0000

Generally, when we write articles for our blog, we like them to get read. Writing content is no longer the hardest thing to do for a blog. It’s actually getting that content read that’s so challenging. Unfortunately, simply writing a blog post doesn’t just cut it. There’s still more to do.

There’s this thing called marketing, and when you actually do it, your articles tend to get read by more people. Now, “more people” can mean one or two people, or it can mean thousands of people. It’s all about how you market your blog post that gets it read.

There’s just one problem: most of us suck at marketing.

It’s easy to get so worried about actually writing a blog post, that we forget about the second, possibly more important part: the people who read it. Unless you really love to write, publishing articles for months straight without reactions might get on your nerves.

The Secret About Blog Marketing

Maybe it’s more than a misconception than a secret, but the most important thing about marketing your blog is not the actual promotion of the blog as a whole, but the individual articles you publish.

Tell me, which headline would get more clicks:

I can almost guarantee that the second headline would get more attention. The general tagline of this site describes what Blogussion is all about, but there’s nothing exciting about it.

It’s not to say that with a more exciting tagline (how many of you would be mad if I changed the tagline of this blog to “Blogussion – The most insane blogging tips blog you will ever f****** read”) it wouldn’t market better than an article, but it only works for so long.

Now, I can make a headline for an article whatever I want. If I promote a new article everyday, it would create more buzz than if I were to promote Blogussion as “blogging discussion, tips and tricks.”

So that’s just a useful marketing tip, if you haven’t figured that much out yet about the subject.

What can we do to draw traffic to blog posts?
Because the main idea of marketing your blog is marketing individual articles, what are some things you can do to get word out about your article? It takes a lot of different strategies and techniques, but there are plenty of things you can do.

So this weekend, I want to debate with you the tactics you use to draw attention and traffic to your blog articles. Recommend to me, and the rest of the community anything you do. From commenting on other blogs to running gnarly blogging contests, I (and many others) want to hear how you do it.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you in the discussion!

Ultimate Social Plugin for WordPress: FV Community News

Janith — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 03:52:31 +0000

Running a successful blog is just as demanding as starting a business, meeting a goal or even running for the US presidency (exaggeration at it’s best!). It all depends on how much effort you put in and what you want to achieve with your blog.

Maintaining a successful blog and the above comparisons are by far different on many levels, but nevertheless they both require a type of confidence, a type of motivation and most importantly; a type of perseverance.

Anyways, moving on from the radical metaphors.. the point of that introduction was to highlight how hard it is to run a blog.

If you run a blog by yourself or with a friend – you know how easily how the workload can just pile up! When it comes to constantly writing good content, responding to your readers and obviously building on traffic – just too much for you to handle? Well, why don’t we eliminate “responding to your readers” as a chore and turn it in to a potential flow of targeted content?

Now, that would be a big positive because that would partially take care of two so-called “chores” of running a blog! So, what if there’s an ‘ultimate social plugin‘ that will do wonders to your site, ease your workload and EVEN please your readers? Well.. there is!

FV Community News allows your visitors to help you create more content for your site! A simple, yet ingenious plug-in to really incorporate your reader’s opinion and boost your site’s value, content and even SERPs.

As said by the developers themselves – “With this new Community News plugin you allow your visitors to add articles to the sidebar. Complete with moderation panel and a settings page, you can sit back while you have full control about the look and articles that being posted.”

Features

Currently, the Community News plugin has the following features:

Widget Ready (Different form/results widget)
Tags for use in posts/pages
AJAX Form Handling
Multi-Language Support
Moderation panel (with email option) – Make sure you approve the right articles
Edit Submissions
`My Submissions` Page
Customizable templates
Captcha Spam protection (on/off)
Akismet Spam protection (API key required)
Build-in RSS 2.0 Feed
Image Uploading
Settings
Uninstall Page
Configurable Responses

The Big Bad Wolf of FV Community News

That’s all the positives, but when it comes to using this plugin there are a couple of downfalls. The whole idea of allowing your readers to contribute with useful content is great – till you get spammers that try to abuse this feature.

You might find yourself accepting/rejecting articles added via this plugin a lot more than your comments ~ so, you need to balance out between free-content and loyalty of your readers. If you having problems with spammers, I would not even hesitate to suggest the use of Akismet and BadBahvious. The combination of these two plugins will take care most of your spammers!

Quick FV Community News Information

Author : Frank Verhoeven
Wordpress Version (required): 2.5+
Tested up to Version: 2.7
Current Plug-In Version: 1.3

What does it look like?

You can see the FV Community News in action over at DivitoDesigns. The side bar on the far-right is all content added by the readers. Also here’s a quick screen-shot of the actual Admin Control Panel, which can be accessed through your WordPress Admin CP;

Check it out, and let us know what you think!