6 Plugins to Help Grow Your Blog Comments
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Every blogger’s goal is to receive a lot of comments on their blog. Let’s face it, having an active blog is very important, it builds a community around your blog and keeps readers more engaged.
Sometimes building a community around your blog can be hard, especially for new bloggers. So you have to ask yourself what’s the trick to increasing comments on my blog? In this post I will discuss 6 great plug-ins that can help increase comment activity on your blog.
CommentLuv
Commentluv is a great plugin to show your readers that you care and value what they have to say. Commentluv displays a link to the most recent blog post of your commentators’ blog at the end of each of their comments that users fill their blog URL in the “website” box.
ReplyMe
Replyme is a plugin that emails the commentator when they received a reply to their comment. Unlike “subscribe to comments” plugin ReplyMe only sends an email to people who respond to the commentators specific comment.
Thank Me Later
Thank me later is a great plugin that allows you to thank your readers for commenting on your blog. This plugin will automatically send an email to the first time commentators on your blog saying thanks for commenting. This is a great way to begin building a relationship with your commentators and to let them know that you appreciate their input.
Do Follow Comments
The do follow plugin allows you to remove the evil “nofollow” attribute WordPress places in commentators links that lets search engines ignore their links for indexing in Google searches. With do follow comments, commentators will receive some of the page rank link juice back to their blog.
Show Top Commentators
If you have ever had a group of people who constantly comment your blog, and they just love being an active member of your community, why not return the love?
With My top commentators widget, you can display a widget on your sidebar that displays the top commentators on your blog and includes a do follow link back to their blog.
Download top commentators plug-in
Subscribe To Comments
Subscribe to comments is a plugin that allows your commentators to be notified by email with new comments that are left on that entry. This way your readers can stay engaged in the conversation, without having to constantly check for new entries left on that article.
Download Subscribe to comments
Group Reflection:
These plugins have helped me improve commenting amongst my blog, and I know it has helped many others.
My personal favorites are:
- ReplyMe, Top Commentators Widget & CommentLuv
Which one of these plug-ins have you used? Are there any you recommend? And which ones do you like most?
izzat aziz said:
i go wiht comment luv, top commentator, and do follow. Might consider to try other later on.. i pretty happy with number of comment i have now, even it not much.. but still it quite nice..
one that really help i could say comment luv..
InternetHow Blog said:
I would say, those 3 also helped me to receive a lot of comments. Especially comment love …
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Jay Medina said:
Nice post! I would agree with the 3 comments. Comment luv works well, because you show other people that you care. But none the less those types of comments works pretty fine.
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David | ilcantone.com said:
I use almost all of them. I especially like “Top commentators” and “Comment Luv” great plugins, and I’m sure they helped my blog to increase the amount of comments. I didn’t know about “thank me later”, I’m thinking if I should use it or not.
Thanks Rob for sharing these tips and plugins.
Regrads
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Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> I love CommentLuv but as you can tell on the blog here, I had to customize it a bit to make it really blend nicely with my theme.
Arisu said:
Thanks for the tips, “Reply Me” sounds like the plugin I need, cause replies to my comments interest me more than all the others, and I´m sure I´m not the only one who thinks like that. ^^
The one thing I don´t like is the CommentLuv Button, not pretty at all.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Arisu –> I agree. It took me a while to customize it on here because I didn’t like that look either.
Arisu said:
And it looks really nice
I wish they gave you some more options instead of the button.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Arisu –> I do to. I had to actually edit the layout of the plugin to get mine to look how I wanted it. I’ve seen a lot of WordPress plugins that could be greatly improved if they would simply add more options to it.
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews said:
You and your programing guru-ness.
That is seriously cool though. I did notice comment luv showed up a lot cleaner here on SS101.
What all did you end up editing?
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews –> Pretty much you can use CSS to tell the whole thing to be invisible. It’s actually here on the page just like on any page, I just have the display attribute set to none. So it does all the work without anyone seeing it.
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews said:
I think replyme is actually my fav of the plugins mentioned. I just started using it, but I’ve already seen an increase in secondary replies.
I wish I could bring replyme with me to all the blogs I comment on!
I’ve also strongly started considering disqus. It might be a little harder to setup, but I think it proves a very nice commenter interface.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews –> I’ve actually been working with the creators of Disqus on some of their other social reactions plugins. They’re creating some stuff for WordPress that I’ve been providing feedback on. I think they are planning to launch it tomorrow.
Mik said:
I use subscribe to comments, comment luv and do follow, will check out the others.
thanks for listing them.
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Dayne | TheHappySelf.com said:
I already use a few of these with great success, esp. CommentLuv. There are a few other ones here I may also implement, thanks for pointing these out!
Cheers,
Dayne
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Chad said:
Thanks for outlining all of this. I have been looking for a better commenting system. I especially like those that list a commenters latest blog post. I would imagine it increases readers’ willingness to comment.
Thanks!
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Teen Blogger said:
Very helful post.
I currently use the commentluv, top commentators with a do follow link back for the top 10 commentators and the subscribe to comments plugins.
I will think of implementing the other ways, however i’m not to sure about the do follow comments as you will receive lots and lots of spam. People are willing to do anything to get backlinks to their website so these are some good ways.
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King Sidharth said:
Use that old goody Plugin.. works really
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Teen Blogger –> You don’t get any more spam. I use dofollow on my site and check it out…it’s all good.
David | ilcantone.com said:
Agree, I turned my blog into a DoFollow two weeks ago. I receive more spam but not much more than usual. But, on the other hand, I’ve noticed about a 10%-15% increase in comments.
So, come on, join to the DoFollow family
.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
David | ilcantone.com –> Thanks for the support on this. I switched a while back and I’m still thrilled that I did.
Extreme John said:
I use everything except for Reply Me I am going to have to check that plugin out now it seems like a great idea. Certainly welcoming.
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Blake @ Props Blog Reviews said:
I have noticed decent increase in back-and-forth comments compared to before. It is a lot easier to keep up with replies on comments that are relevant to your interest.
Reply Me > subscribe to comments imo.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Blake @ Props Blog Reviews –> Does that plugin give you the option to opt-out of the response emails because I have a feeling that some people may find it annoying.
ZXT said:
I use all except Reply Me and Top Commentators. Better start using Top Commentators now.
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George Serradinho said:
I only have 3 of the plugins you mentioned. I think the others are nice, but not for me. Also trying to keep the number of plugins low.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
George Serradinho –> That’s the thing. I have to make sure that you only use the ones that support your overall theme at your website.
Dana @ Online Knowledge said:
You cover it well. All tips on this article surely can make our comment form more life.
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John Samuel said:
So far I have used only one of these plugins: Commentluv. And it is really helping me to get a good load of comments. But I think it’s time that I try these plugins
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Blaine Bullman said:
I welcome any plugin that helps people to comment more but the one plugin im interested in is the “Thank Me Later” plugin.
I’ve seen it and thought it’s a cool way to automatically thank those who comment.
Id like to alter and change what’s said in the email but that is one of the best plugins I’ve seen if you know how to use it.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Blaine Bullman –> With the Thank Me Later plugin you have complete control over what the email says. It’s very flexible.
Gabe | freebloghelp.com said:
I love CommentLuv or any plugin that gives visitors the little stroke they’re looking for.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Gabe | freebloghelp.com –> Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg.com says that we have to stroke our users ego and provide tools that actually help them.
Bendesign said:
Great Article. Thank you for sharing. I recommend reply me and comment love.
Greetings from Germany.
Bendesign
Ron Boracay said:
The comment luv and top commentators plugin is my top 2 favorites. It attracts commenters as well as it also add some backlinks for you. (some sites are listing blogs or websites using those plugins).
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sernan said:
now i am having some more reasons to switch to WP…
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Nicholas Cardot said:
I love WordPress. I’ve used blogger and Joomla in the past and none have made the work of blogging so simple as when I’ve worked with WordPress.
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Ron Boracay said:
Oh before I forgot, aside from those plugins, responding to each and every comment helps to grow more and drive more commenters in your post/blog.
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Nicholas Cardot said:
Ron Boracay –> You’re right about that. Interacting with your readers is the absolute best way to get your readers to interact with you.
Darvin @ Best Ionic Air Purifiers said:
Thanks for showing the Luv Rob. I use Comment and Keyword Luv, as well as DOFollow. They do a great job of increasing traffic. You do have to watch out for spam though.
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Alan @ Basin Glass Pipes said:
I have been looking for that Thank me later plug-in for a few days now. Great list for noob bloggers like myself.
Angie@Tidy Cat Litter said:
Great blog post on the plugins.I like the commentluv and keywordluv plugins. Link building is definitely a huge part of building up your blog online, and I’m personally of the opinion that Google tends to show a little bit more favor to blogs that have comments and conversations going on.
Nicholas Cardot said:
Angie@Tidy Cat Litter » I don’t know if Google does or doesn’t but I know that people do. They see lots of comments and they know that it’s a community that they can jump right into and join the fun.
Erasmo Frothingham said:
I think this is interesting and don’t hear often. Thanks for great content.
Tommy said:
Hey Rob, Thanks for the suggestions. I added CommentLuv and ReplyMe to my blog. I’m a teenager also, and I would like to congratulate you on being so successful. You write quite well for being young as well.
One concern I had with ReplyMe and Thank Me Later is that I imagine most people, and first time commentators, who aren’t familiar with WordPress may view the emails flooding their inbox as indication of future “junk mail” to come, which might make the whole process counterproductive. I guess I’m fairly protective of my inbox, but I can’t imagine other people feel so differently.
What do you think?
Also, to Nicholas, what do you think of incorporating Facebook Connect with your blog for easier commentating. I was for sure going to add it to mine, but then I saw you did not have it, and there must be a reason why. Any discussion about this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks, Tommy
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glasspipes@gmail.com said:
the do follow links is vert important for seo perpose. thanx for sharing me this info.
Lauren @ Driving Schools Bromley said:
You know Rob, I posted about this recently on my own website. This post has really provided me with some food for thought and I feel that you made many very intriguing points. I simply wish I had seen it prior to posting my own blog post.
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