All Ya Need is (Comment) Luv
Taking a look at blogs around the internet there’s really one factor that sets the good ones apart from the bad, and that’s simply the depth of discussion on the content (posts) on that blog. Beyond the content on the blog itself, the template, et. al., there are a couple of simple plugins that can really encourage good comments and discussions.
I’m in luv with, well you guess it, Comment Luv. As an avid blogger, I enjoy getting feedback and comments from visitors; it tells me what I’m doing right, what I could do better and of course, comments provide a forum for discussion and the voicing of ideas.
I like to give back to frequent visitors and fellow bloggers that contribute meaningfully to discussions on topics; those visitors that I find the most witty and interesting I’ll including in my blog’s blogroll as a way of saying, “right on man, you rock.”
Comment Luv is a plugin that helps me give back a little to the bloggers that comment on my website by adding a little link to the bottom of their comment with their last blog post. Pretty exciting, huh? Here’s a snapshot of Comment Luv in action (courtesy of Comluv.com):
I definitely don’t think Comment Luv should be used as a means of enticing visitors to comment on your blog, but I do think that a good comment deserves some link love. Here’s a look at the Comment Luv back end:
If you get a chance, check this bad-boy out; Here’s a link to where you can download and install the plugin on your own blog: http://comluv.com/download/commentluv-wordpress/.
Another plugin from Comment Luv distributes is Twitter Link; now I haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon on this one, but it allows the visitor to merely enter their Twitter user name and, lo and behold, their latest tweets show up below their comment. Sound cool? Check it out here: http://comluv.com/download/twitterlink-comments/. Here’s a look at Twitter Link in action:
A great way to keep discussion going on a WordPress post is to separate comments and pings – have trackbacks and pingbacks in their own separate area, and allow comments to flow uninterrupted. Here’s a great plugin that can automatically do this for you without having to jump into your template’s source code: http://urbangiraffe.com/plugins/separate-comment-pings/.
Hope the above plugins provide some help to all those bloggers out there!
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Posted at 03:13h, 21 JanuaryIts a truly awesome thing given in this post.I completely agree with this concept.
Martin Luther
Posted at 02:24h, 22 JanuaryNice blog post you hvae
Paul Mobley
Posted at 10:11h, 22 JanuaryPersonally I don't see the value of the plugin. But maybe that's just me.
drewmeyers
Posted at 11:40h, 22 JanuaryHow does commentluv compare to disqus?
Justin Bartlett
Posted at 06:33h, 30 AprilDrew, everyone, theres pros and cons to both; the idea behind Disqus is to hold conversations over multiple websites, at least that's the big perk in my mind. Unfortunately it's not really much of a perk; usually people comment on the content of the post, and actual conversations (as noted above) are rarer, and rarer still is one commenter going to continue the conversation on another website.
Disqus also has a couple of useful perks built in, such as open it, fb connect, twitter logins, etc., however the same open commenting can be easily implemented into your blog using plugins.
Here's why I'm semi-against discuss:
1)Filtering: Commentor >> Askimet >> Me >> Posted Comment Vs. Commentor >> Askimet >> Disqus >> Me >> Posted Comment .. ? Kind of a wash to me.
2) Having better design control over how the comments look is appealing to me. I just found a couple of tutorials on making author comments and admin comments stand out on wordpress (will be posting article soon, I promise!)
3) Biggest reason: MENTALITY: I'm going to give out link love, so at the end of the day, I'm going to get some link love back. No one can tell me that having commentluv enabled on your blog does not get you gobs of new traffic and tons of repeat traffic, even if you only have 1 or 2 tech or seo related posts. Webmasters love connecting with other webmasters.
4) You have the option with Disqus now to enable comment luv, so they must see it as worthwhile.
5) I hate, hate, hate nofollow. Wanna hear Matt Cutts stutter? Ask him what's the point of no follow? (Oh my I hope I'm not opening a huge debate on this)
6) 100 outgoing links on a page — From Matt Cutts blog itself, and that's just a “benchmark”. What on earth am I talking about? The approximate number of outgoing links before your site will be umm “penalized” for lack of a better term. Actually, a much better way to think of it is like this:
You have a website with a certain amount of “link juice”. For each link that you have outgoing beyond a reasonable amount, the strength of your outgoing link juice goes down. So if I had 44 grams of sugar in my link juice going out, and I add 100 links, lets say each link now only gets 27 grams of sugar.
There's a ton of webmasters that hog their PR and dont want to send outbound links because they haven't figured this out yet. Don't over link and your fine.
Guess what? Google pays attention to who you link to! According to SEOMoz, this is one of the biggest factors that webmasters don't take into consideration.
Your outbound links are going to tell Google alot about your “community”, and whether you are in a good link neighborhood, or a bad one. There was a time if you linked out to John Choo, you could expect an immediate drop 20+ slots for almost any keyword. This brings me to my next point.
7) Comment Luv feels like an umm open-gated community (if that makes any sense), where only kind, loving people hang out that believe in spreading the wealth. I love to browse top traffic blogs and see whats new and cool.. So I come across this blog, “One Mans Blog”, and think, hmm, catchy title, good content.. There's a chat bar on the bottom and one user logged on (it's 4:30am, EST) and he says “hey, how's it going”. So there I am talking with the blog owner about this and that. A little while into the conversation as he's giving me more and more incredible tips, not just SEO tips but solid gold tips – branding, monetizing, etc, it finally dawns on me (after a quick trip to Alexa) this guy has an Alexa rank that makes me drool and makes at least half a mil a year. Working a couple hours a weak. I learned so much from talking to the guy. Guess what, he uses Comment Luv.
I want to address the part about not closing deals from comments; I have to disagree in a roundabout way: You're almost never going to close a deal from a comment directly – that's not the point. Comments are for people that ain't gonna buy your product anyways but wanna talk about it, or share some insight, or have already bought what your selling and want to say something nice about it. Comments establish ethos. A blog without comments is like a medicine bottle without a label. Would you take the blue pill? Heck no.
Finally – and you're going to find this hard to believe –
I'm the worlds biggest fanatic about comments. Leave me a great comment and I'll give you your well deserved link. But I report well wishers as spam daily (just read my comment spam manifesto).
Every single comment that I've ever gotten accross 20 sites now that has that little heart icon and a blog post has been a good, relevant comment that even the comment stickler in me likes. And I have to approve it.
On a final note, the only people that are going to check that little box next to the heart to display their last blog post are the people that actually know what commentluv is. I don't know how commentluv does it, but all those people are damn nice. Whatever I've lost in a very teensy tiny little amount of link juice that flows throughout my site, I've gained in webmasters doing my deeplinking for me, and linking to posts they found interesting enough to comment on. Even if they we're only motivated to comment to get a link from my site.
Well, that's all for me for now. I gotta connect with Phoenix Real Estate Guy if you can put him in touch with me; I finally got around to looking at his site and realized he's running thesis. I have a ton of questions for him…
Magin Webdesign
Posted at 16:09h, 04 AprilThat’s really helpful Justin,
exactly the answer I’m looking for.
Guess its time to turn on Comment Luv!
Jacksonville waterfront homes
Posted at 15:04h, 22 Januarybig fan of disqus myself
Brad
Posted at 21:01h, 23 JanuaryI've used commentluv and like it.
Ryan Hinricher
Posted at 08:31h, 25 JanuaryCurrently using Disqus here. Are there advantages of using them together or does this full replace?
coloradohomefinder
Posted at 09:37h, 25 JanuarySounds like it's worth checking out. Thanks for the info
Marissa Myers
Posted at 13:51h, 25 JanuaryI agree with you: it's the depth of discussion on posts that sets a blog apart. I'd love to see a Top 10 list of real estate blog, measured by number of comments. Or a comment index. It'd be great to head straight to blogs that ranked high on a comment index of some sort. Is there some way of easily seeing what's attracting conversation?
Jay Thompson
Posted at 15:58h, 25 JanuaryInteresting thoughts on comments. In almost five years of real estate blogging, I've found very few real estate buyers and sellers leave comments. Mine come mostly from industry people.
Buyers and sellers typically email directly or call.
And I'll take those emails and calls over comments any day of the week.
I've got a blog with pretty reasonable traffic and get maybe one comment for every 100 unique visitors. At best. The vast majority of blog readers never comment.
Don't get me wrong, I love the interaction commenting provides. But I don't blog to get comments, I blog to get clients.
Marissa Myers
Posted at 16:21h, 25 JanuaryAbsolutely, Jay — blog to get clients! I'm curious: do you track where your buyer and sellers come from? What's the breakdown–blog, referrals, past customers? I'd love to know how valuable is your blog versus other methods for getting clients. If there was one marketing method Jay couldn't live without, it's ________ .
But when I want to improve marketing or learn about leading technologies, etc — I often learn more from comment discussions than the original post!
Mark Madsen
Posted at 16:09h, 27 JanuaryI agree with Jay. I've actually closed the comments on my consumer focused mortgage blogs so that I don't accidentally confuse a borrower about where they need to leave an important question.
I'm also in the process of adding question and call-to-action forms at the bottom of each post in order to make the process of communicating with me as easy as possible for potential clients.
However, I just took a second look at this Disqus tool, and I like how it allows me to update my Twitter stream with my blog community activity.
For my B2B blogs, I love any plugin that will help encourage community participation. I'll explore Comment Luv a little more as well. Thanks for the post.
Naomi Trower
Posted at 06:52h, 28 JanuaryI have the same philosophy. I don't wig out if my best “PRIZE” blog post doesn't have any comments. The awesome thing is that my phone is ringing! 🙂
Jay Thompson
Posted at 15:55h, 25 JanuaryLast I checked, CommentLuv wasn't compatible with Disqus.
They are really two completely different things. Disqus is a commenting “system”. All CommentLuv does is place a link in a commenter's comment to their last blog post.
Bruce
Posted at 18:33h, 25 JanuaryAny system that generates more links to your site is invaluable.
buy r4
Posted at 22:01h, 27 JanuaryHi,
The Comment Luv plugin, when activated, inserts a link to your most recent post, when you leave a comment on a blog that has the CommentLuv plugin activated.I think that commentluv is really good, for blog owner, commenter and reader.
Naomi Trower
Posted at 06:50h, 28 JanuaryI have had CommentLuv installed on my blog for a long time and then I tried to install Disqus commenting system. There is a problem with Disqus and my blog design which my wordpress guru has to do some coding to fix it. I do know that CommentLuv stopped working when I installed Disqus. I'm not sure if my wordpress guy can code it to make them work together. We'll see but that's a backburner project for me.
Jamie
Posted at 04:15h, 13 FebruaryAn interesting tool, I may use it on my website, but I'm still not sold. For the majority of bloggers I don't think comments are a major traffic driving factor. In some cases Comment Luv could provide some incentive for serious discussion, but ultimately I don't think its terribly important.
renanorola
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Justin Bartlett
Posted at 13:33h, 30 AprilDrew, everyone, theres pros and cons to both; the idea behind Disqus is to hold conversations over multiple websites, at least that's the big perk in my mind. Unfortunately it's not really much of a perk; usually people comment on the content of the post, and actual conversations (as noted above) are rarer, and rarer still is one commenter going to continue the conversation on another website.
Disqus also has a couple of useful perks built in, such as open it, fb connect, twitter logins, etc., however the same open commenting can be easily implemented into your blog using plugins.
Here's why I'm semi-against discuss:
1)Filtering: Commentor >> Askimet >> Me >> Posted Comment Vs. Commentor >> Askimet >> Disqus >> Me >> Posted Comment .. ? Kind of a wash to me.
2) Having better design control over how the comments look is appealing to me. I just found a couple of tutorials on making author comments and admin comments stand out on wordpress (will be posting article soon, I promise!)
3) Biggest reason: MENTALITY: I'm going to give out link love, so at the end of the day, I'm going to get some link love back. No one can tell me that having commentluv enabled on your blog does not get you gobs of new traffic and tons of repeat traffic, even if you only have 1 or 2 tech or seo related posts. Webmasters love connecting with other webmasters.
4) You have the option with Disqus now to enable comment luv, so they must see it as worthwhile.
5) I hate, hate, hate nofollow. Wanna hear Matt Cutts stutter? Ask him what's the point of no follow? (Oh my I hope I'm not opening a huge debate on this)
6) 100 outgoing links on a page — From Matt Cutts blog itself, and that's just a “benchmark”. What on earth am I talking about? The approximate number of outgoing links before your site will be umm “penalized” for lack of a better term. Actually, a much better way to think of it is like this:
You have a website with a certain amount of “link juice”. For each link that you have outgoing beyond a reasonable amount, the strength of your outgoing link juice goes down. So if I had 44 grams of sugar in my link juice going out, and I add 100 links, lets say each link now only gets 27 grams of sugar.
There's a ton of webmasters that hog their PR and dont want to send outbound links because they haven't figured this out yet. Don't over link and your fine.
Guess what? Google pays attention to who you link to! According to SEOMoz, this is one of the biggest factors that webmasters don't take into consideration.
Your outbound links are going to tell Google alot about your “community”, and whether you are in a good link neighborhood, or a bad one. There was a time if you linked out to John Choo, you could expect an immediate drop 20+ slots for almost any keyword. This brings me to my next point.
7) Comment Luv feels like an umm open-gated community (if that makes any sense), where only kind, loving people hang out that believe in spreading the wealth. I love to browse top traffic blogs and see whats new and cool.. So I come across this blog, “One Mans Blog”, and think, hmm, catchy title, good content.. There's a chat bar on the bottom and one user logged on (it's 4:30am, EST) and he says “hey, how's it going”. So there I am talking with the blog owner about this and that. A little while into the conversation as he's giving me more and more incredible tips, not just SEO tips but solid gold tips – branding, monetizing, etc, it finally dawns on me (after a quick trip to Alexa) this guy has an Alexa rank that makes me drool and makes at least half a mil a year. Working a couple hours a weak. I learned so much from talking to the guy. Guess what, he uses Comment Luv.
I want to address the part about not closing deals from comments; I have to disagree in a roundabout way: You're almost never going to close a deal from a comment directly – that's not the point. Comments are for people that ain't gonna buy your product anyways but wanna talk about it, or share some insight, or have already bought what your selling and want to say something nice about it. Comments establish ethos. A blog without comments is like a medicine bottle without a label. Would you take the blue pill? Heck no.
Finally – and you're going to find this hard to believe –
I'm the worlds biggest fanatic about comments. Leave me a great comment and I'll give you your well deserved link. But I report well wishers as spam daily (just read my comment spam manifesto).
Every single comment that I've ever gotten accross 20 sites now that has that little heart icon and a blog post has been a good, relevant comment that even the comment stickler in me likes. And I have to approve it.
On a final note, the only people that are going to check that little box next to the heart to display their last blog post are the people that actually know what commentluv is. I don't know how commentluv does it, but all those people are damn nice. Whatever I've lost in a very teensy tiny little amount of link juice that flows throughout my site, I've gained in webmasters doing my deeplinking for me, and linking to posts they found interesting enough to comment on. Even if they we're only motivated to comment to get a link from my site.
Well, that's all for me for now. I gotta connect with Phoenix Real Estate Guy if you can put him in touch with me; I finally got around to looking at his site and realized he's running thesis. I have a ton of questions for him…
Sophie @ Locksmiths Foresthill
Posted at 12:19h, 03 NovemberI blogged on this very topic myself earlier today, and it was great to see your take on it number.
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Posted at 04:00h, 03 Januarydo you mind if i borrow some content from your site?offcourse i will link back?
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Posted at 07:05h, 03 JanuaryI have beeing searching the Web for such information and i wanted to say thanks to you for this post. BTW, just off topic, how can i download a version of this theme? – 10x
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Posted at 13:16h, 14 FebruaryComment LUV has helped my SERP tremendously!
Huck
Posted at 09:17h, 01 MarchI used to think that installing this plugin is very complex and I never thought much about it. But your post was helpful to me in knowing better. I’m gonna install this plugin in my blog soon. Thanks a lot..
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Posted at 10:01h, 05 AprilGreat blog! I truly love how it’s easy on my eyes and the details are well written. I am wondering how I could be notified whenever a new post has been made.Have a nice day!
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