You’ve got your blog, you’re creating content, are looking into plugins and social sharing. A big congratulations to you! The next thing you’ll want to focus on is commenting. It’s essential to take a look into the many ways that you can set up blog commenting features for your readers to make your (and their) lives easier. After all, commenting is the way that your users are going to engage with your content, so if you can make it even easier to manage, why wouldn’t you?
By doing this, you’ll be allowing your visitors to comment on your blog easily without the necessity of signing up for any type of membership. One of the best third-party comment applications that you can use is Disqus. (A quick (and unrelated) aside: I found out recently that it’s not actually disk-us as you might think, but is cleverly pronounced discuss. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.)
Anyway, back to the point of this post. Overall, Disqus is a free and easy way to manage all of the comments on your blog and provides helpful reminders to make sure you don’t forget to respond to any of them! Side note: Disqus works with WordPress, tumblr., Blogger, Drupal, HTML & JS. So you’ve got your pick.
Step 1: Create an Account
The first thing you’re going to want to do is sign up by visiting the registration page and fill in the required information including your site name, a unique Disqus URL, and category.
Step 2: Choose your platform and INSTALL!
Once your registration is complete, Disqus will ask you to choose the blogging platform that you are using. For the purposes of this post, I’ll be selecting WordPress.
And voila! Look at that. Disqus tells you just how to install it into your blog – could it be any more simple? In case you closed out that screen for some reason, they also send you an e-mail with the same instructions. They’ve got their bases covered, for sure.
If for some reason you are having difficulty installing it, there’s a nice troubleshooting section (cleverly titled with the slug “I’ve installed Disqus on my website but it isn’t loading what do I do now”) on the site where you can (hopefully) figure out where there may have been an error with installation.
Disqus is Installed! Now What Do I Do?
You did it! Disqus is installed on your website, but I’m sure you’re curious about all of the fantastic things it can do for you. One of the best things (at least in my opinion) about Disqus is that you can have all of your comments sent directly to your e-mail address and you can moderate them from there without having to log in. You can simply reply to the e-mail with Delete, Approve, or Spam, and you’re set to go.
Something that I do periodically is log in to Disqus (or take a look directly through WordPress since I’m signed in the majority of the time anyway) to ensure that no straggler spam comments made it through the cracks (or that I perhaps overlooked them.)
It’s always a good idea to do a quick audit of your comments to avoid spammers and to also make sure you respond to your interested readers. After all, they are interested in what you have to say, so you don’t want to leave them hanging if they have something to say right back.
But Wait! What About Comments if Someone Guest Posts on My Blog?
If you do decide to allow guest posting on your blog, you’re going to want to make sure that they sign up to receive their comments, otherwise they may miss the opportunity to engage with their readers. How to do this, you ask? All it takes is 1 little click:
So WHY Should I Use Disqus Again? And Not Just Moderate Via My Blog Host?
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You get automatic email replies when comments are left on your blog.
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If you respond, the commenter will get an e-mail as well.
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There are lots of blogs out there that use Disqus, and the profiles that commenters create are shared across blogs. So this helps to increase your network reach.
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It integrates with a number of different blog-o-spheres.
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Oh yeah, and I think I mentioned this already but it’s FREE.
These are only a few of the reasons that Disqus will be helpful for your blog, so give it a shot to help manage your comments. Good luck, and keep your eyes peeled for a follow-up post on Facebook commenting!
Have you used Disqus before or are you starting to? What do you think of its capabilities?
