6 Ways To Add More User-Interactivity To Your Blog
Author: Stefan Vervoort | Please Comment!
Photo By suzanneandsimon
One big difference between a blog and a website is the way visitors can interact with the blog author. Bloggers allow all their visitors to leave a comment anytime. If they asked a question, simple say they enjoyed the article or when you don’t agree with the author’s opinion. That’s the power of the blog.
I have to admit, getting comments is one of the greatest things you can get when you are blogger. You get the confirmation your visitors are actually there and they aren’t just a number on your statistics software.
But allowing comments isn’t everything you can do to get user interactivity on your blog, many more options exist. In this article we will go through the solutions I think works best to improve user interactivity.
1. Contact Form
You should always try to make things as easy as possible for your readers on your blog. People are lazy and busy and if they can’t find something right way, they will simply leave.
The same thing with the contact form: if they can’t find that page in one click, they are usually gone. If you make it easy to find your contact information and web-form, you will receive more thank-, opinion- and comment-emails. That’s always great.
In some cases you could even add multiply contact forms to your blog to improve the number of emails you get.
My plugin recommendation is Cforms II: the best contact form plugin available for Wordpress.
2. Polls
Adding a poll is a very good feature to add when you want to improve user interactivity. Many people read your article and move on, because they don’t have the time to add a opinion through the comments.
With a poll however the user only has to click once to leave an opinion and they will do that easier. You can also use the poll to gather valuable information about your visitors!
A good solution to add a poll to your Wordpress blog is the WP-Polls plugin.
3. Shoutbox
If you have a free spot in your sidebar and you want your visitors to contact you even easier then hitting the “contact” button, consider using a shoutbox on your blog.
In a shoutbox a user can “shout” what they would like to tell you or the other visitors. Your visitor usually only has to add their name, email and their message, so when placed on a easy to find spot, it’ll really stimulate user interactivity.
You can find a live example of a shoutbox on Jeffro2pt0. To add a shoutbox to your Wordpress blog, the following plugins AJAX Shoutbox and WP-Wall are recommended.
4. Community Forums
If you want to have a conversation or extensive discussion, the comments under your article aren’t the right place. That’s where your forum software comes in: you can separate the discussion from the other comments.
Forums were developed to let people talk to each other and therefore ideal for these kind of conversations. It can also become a place where visitors come to discuss and talk about niche-related news.
Remember: to make a forum successful on your blog you need to have a large visitors base.
This article will tell you exactly how to integrate forums with your Wordpress blog.
5. Community News
Community news is a feature that is popping up at some more places lately: it allows visitors to promote their own articles in the sidebar of your blog.
If you don’t have the time to fill your readers’ hunger for more articles, let them provide interesting articles for their fellow readers by adding the news items to your sidebar.
Frank Verhoeven has just released the Community News plugin that
allows your visitors to add their news to the sidebar or page.
6. Voting
Usually, people have their opinion ready about an article, plugin, theme or website. Why not use this fact and let people rate that stuff with a voting system?
This way you make it very easy (same principle as with polls) for people to give their opinion about something, just with one simple click.
To add a voting system to your Wordpress blog, you could use the GD Star Rating plugin.
Do you have other tricks?
There are loads more ideas and tricks in the world that could improve the user interactivity of your blog, so if you would like to share some that could help me or the readers, please do so in the comments!
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5:29 pm on October 8th, 2008
Nice ideas here, and I think a lot of them will work, in most cases.
I really like the shout one, and having polls. Both of which I am lacking at the moment. I am considering adding in some polls where they would fit. Thanks for the links!
6:54 pm on October 8th, 2008
I am considering adding in some polls where they would fit. Thanks for the links!
7:16 pm on October 8th, 2008
Don’t forget to write interesting content! Otherwise visitors won’t feel the need to response to your blog. It may sound silly and logical but in the end it’s the most important thing.
Besides this: setting up a content might be an idea. I also like the idea on dailymonster.com to let your visitors write their own story in relation with your post. Also a nice concept.
8:58 am on October 9th, 2008
@Matt - Having polls is always a good idea! It really helped me building some more user interactivity. You should do that!
@Svetainiu - You should do that! Polls are always good :).
@Santhos - Content ofcourse the most important part of whole blog! I don’t know Dailymonster but it sounds like a good idea!
Thanks for your comments!
10:08 am on October 9th, 2008
i really prevaricated this difference because through this not only interaction between blogger and visitor increased but newly ideas comes on…
Shopping Cart
10:54 am on October 9th, 2008
Hey man, thanks for adding me to the list and for the link. I actually use a third party service called ShoutMix and then I embed the shoutmix box into a Text Widget on my blog. However, if I would of known about WP-Wall http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/wordpress-plugins/wp-wall I would have used that instead.
12:36 pm on October 9th, 2008
Hey Jeffro — No problem, and thanks for the recommendation. I will add that to the article.
5:47 pm on October 9th, 2008
You have mentioned wordpress-only ratings, I think this one will be nice for every blog: http://js-kit.com/ratings/
8:43 pm on October 9th, 2008
@Konstantin — I agree, nice piece of software!
11:19 am on October 10th, 2008
useful tips described in a good way, ya polling helps a lot but never thought about shout box, should give it a try. Also i agree with Santhos that the content should be real interesting if the visitors have to stick to your blog.
8:41 pm on October 11th, 2008
I think Santhos has the real point at issue. Content is and always has been king.
3:54 am on October 12th, 2008
Nice tips and tricks. The Polls and Voting Options works best. How about a plug-in that let the audience suggest titles for the respective posts?
8:19 am on October 12th, 2008
Often, these methods do not work on smaller blogs (I’m saying from experience). However, it seems that forums and community links do go well.
The community news plugin looks awesome - thanks for introducing it to me!
10:52 am on October 13th, 2008
i believe it’s unnecessary to keep a shoutbox on the site. the page loads harder because of that. on the other hand, the rest are “a must have”.
5:29 pm on October 13th, 2008
Yeah.. I too agree these things will help in user interaction..
But I’m afraid of the people who misuses or use abuse words in the same.. It always make me trouble…
4:19 pm on October 19th, 2008
Just to say a HUGE thank you for the star rating tip it’s just what I needed
Katie
12:37 am on October 24th, 2008
some great ideas and i have used a couple of them before, however this is the first attempt i have had at a forum and i hvae only managed to get 5members so its hard work so far
but thanks for the tips.
10:33 am on October 30th, 2008
I agree, if your content is what people are there for then you might as well spend a little more time on it.
But keeping users active, making them feel welcome is making their experience broader than just “good content”.
I personally like the polls and voting. I’m going to try those out some time in the future.
12:20 am on November 2nd, 2008
I have found voting can be useful (and remember to provide a list of top rated posts). Also requesting user suggested posts or guest posts can work on some blogs.
6:29 pm on November 5th, 2008
Great tips! I have been getting 23,000 pageviews a month, but not too much interaction from the readers. I tried a poll once, it didn’t do too well, I think I only had one or two votes after a few months…
But then again I think it also depends on the blog and the topic/target audience.
6:33 pm on November 5th, 2008
Hey Chelle, thank you for your reply. If you have 23.000 pageviews a month, you should see some more interaction from your readers, especially with a poll. One thing that might work is asking a question in your article and refer them to the poll to vote. Or you could make the poll stand out some more.
I hope that helped. I like the site you have there, the 100 best romantic movies will help me out!
5:39 pm on November 7th, 2008
I like the idea of using plugins and knowing now that there is one for polls will come in handy. I’m going to give it a try.
8:02 am on December 9th, 2008
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2:08 am on December 17th, 2008
do you nkow how i can implement the voting system without the use of wordpress?
8:38 am on December 17th, 2008
Cool techniques , and i believe that they are really effective and its really worth a try, thanks for this great share and good write up. Cheers
10:41 am on December 30th, 2008
All the comments must be replied by the author of each blog so as it adds the best user interactivity with other bloggers as well as author
10:49 am on December 30th, 2008
Of course, that’s important. Thanks for the comment.
9:28 pm on January 4th, 2009
Voting an polls are very important in my opinion.
great post like ever