3 WordPress Plugins to Boost Visitor Interaction
Finding ways to increase user engagement and interaction on your site is a worthy investment of time if blogging is an integral part of your online marketing strategy. With the amount of content published online, providing social (and other) hooks coupled with great content will keep visitors on your site and returning on a regular basis. This post reviews 3 WordPress plugins that are can be .
3 WordPress Plugins to Boost Visitor Interaction
It’s easy to setup a business blog in 5 minutes or less, yet for those who have made the move to host their WordPress blog on their own domain and hosting account, they gain the ownership and flexibility a self hosted blog provides (see bonus tip here for more details). Now it is time to make the most of the site for visitors. Here are 3 plugins currently recommended.
1 – A Plugin that Allows Bloggers to Create Content Specific Widgets
Imagine providing relevant sidebar content for a given post, page, category of posts, tags, or by author. Consider how you could provide:
- More loyal readers with more targeted and relevant content to your readers
- Monetize with more relevant offers to visitors
- Lower bounce rate because users stay longer, making the search engines happier in the process.
There is much more to what this plugin does, it’s so good I decided to share it here with this video I uploaded to Youtube. If for some reason you cannot see the video, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6-nnbaJITc
2- Disqus Commenting System WordPress Plugin
Disqus is a plugin that replaces the built in WordPress commenting system. Don’t worry, it keeps a copy of all comments in the local database if you wish to revert back.
Here are a few ways this plugin increases visitor interaction:
- Connects otherwise disconnected conversations across 14 social networks (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and others) calculating references to your post as “reactions” on your blog.
- Multiple Logins: Once configured, it allows commentors to login with the service they are most comfortable with, Disqus, Twitter, Facebook, OpenID, or Yahoo.
- Disqus profiles currently integrate with: Facebook, Twitter, OpenID, Yahoo, Tumblr, WordPress, Moveable Type and TypePad.
- Allows commentors to share their comments with others in their social networks, expanding the reach of your blog’s content to potential readers you’d otherwise not have. Example, there is a dropdown for Disqus users who have added social networks to their profile (and you should have a Disqus profile one, place it as a link on your Google profile while you are at it) prior to submitting their comment, they can also share the comment on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Get your commentor profile here, and wordpress blog plugin and profile here.
3 – WordPress Plugin to Make Your Blog a Social Network
This is a pretty amazing plugin, and my friend Jack Humphrey did a good job describing it, so I will simply place his video below. If you have problems seeing it, you can catch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esNWkqdbVNM
Experience? Feedback? Suggestions? WordPress is an amazingly flexible platform, what are your experiences with these or similar plugins? Likes, dislikes? We want to hear from you. Chime in below.
Photo Credit: makelessnoise
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Hi, my name is Travis Campbell, I operate this site. I'm here to share what I can from my lessons marketing online. With sizeable investments in continuing education, various software products and services, I have had some winners, and some losers. One way I can extend what I've learned is by writing about it, here... and helping you along the way.
I wasn't aware of these plugins. Excellent stuff here Travis. Thanks so much.
Glad you found the information useful. Let us know if you get rolling with them.
-Travis
You totally get it. Big time saver this was for me. I'm testing several ratings plugins too as I think that might help as well.
Glad to help. Look at the sites of some of the top bloggers, observe what they have, do you see post ratings on their sites? Might be an indicator… Post rankings are nice, but in my experience makes the focus about the content producer and their ability to produce good or not good content, not the *discussion* the content should be prompting.
Others? Am I wrong?
Great plugins you've pointed out here – I wasn't aware of the Mingle plugin, and it looks like a dream. Must test it out for sure! Thanks Travis.
Great plugins you've pointed out here – I wasn't aware of the Mingle plugin, and it looks like a dream. Must test it out for sure! Thanks Travis.