Disqus: The New Way to Do Comments
One of the most important things to remember about blogging is that it is social media. Fundamentally, it is a way of sharing thoughts, ideas, experiences, perceptions, and that whole lot while evoking commentary from the rest of the world (hopefully in a good way). It's like Twitter, but on a huge scale with absolutely no character limits.
Think about Facebook engagement. What's your goal? To type endlessly and never get any feedback, never start any conversations, and never get out of your own little mental bubble?
Yeah, I didn't think so.
Instead, we want our Facebook pages to brim with conversation, links, new ideas, and the path to deeper, stronger connections about the virtual world. How do we do that? Well, we create and share buzz-generating content. We hope people click those hovering share icons. Most of all, we want comments!
As a blogger, I love getting real comments, especially since so much of the comments I read are spam selling me terrible things. Real comments are why this all happens. They show that we have people make it to the site, read, reflect, react, and write.
But, there's been a divide in social media. We blog, that's social media; we use Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, etc, that's social media, too. Many people use those "Login with Facebook" apps to integrate their blog or website with their standard social media profiles. Unfortunately, many users will opt to not share their perceptions and thoughts because they don't like sharing their personal social media profile with a blog all out there in the open.
How can you, as a blogger, increase conversation and engagement with taking advantage of social media?
Answer: Disqus
If you've been on any big blogs lately, you've seen it. It looks like this:
From the Disqus homepage, a conversation between Elvis and Marilyn
With Disqus, blog readers have the opportunity to engage in conversation on any Disqus-based comment feed across the web. They log in with a particular account (or post without an account, depending on your publication settings). Then, they write! If they have an account, they can create a specific profile kind of liked a pimped out Gravatar.
When you create your profile with Disqus, you're also given the option to link in your account to Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and a few other sites. Disqus will send out your conversation to your social media accounts, allow for people to communicate through those feeds, and thus increase the story.
Disqus also has a community tab, accessible through all comment feeds, which shares the top conversations on your website. This is a great way of increasing reader participation, creating a sense of community, and really linking everything together.
Since Disqus is free for all, is extremely easy to install (on WordPress, it's a simple plugin you sign into), has plenty of options, and even has a new monetization program, it's the perfect way for even small blogs to get into the game big time.
For more information on Disqus and to get it for yourself, head over to the Disqus homepage.
There really isn't a better, more user friendly way to optimize reader engagement like this. Get it today, set it up within 10 minutes, and use it to your advantage!