Blog Tipz

A large portion of blogging is all about bringing Internet users together, even those that might not regularly visit blogs. One of the mistakes that a lot of sites continue to make is not allowing users to comment easily.

Integrating anti-spam features into your comment form is fine, but you have to think about the commentators who might not be willing to take the time to enter a few characters into the space before the leaving the comment. If you value the time of your visitors, then it makes more sense not to place this “feature” on your site.

Another common mistake in this field that people make is not allowing visitors to comment without signing up for your site. While it is already hard to remember the hundreds of passwords for individual sites, don’t add another to the long list that people have. Allow everyone to comment on your site.

Continuing on the subscription model, sure you can boast the number of people who are members of your site, but this means little compared to your RSS figures. These people will likely never return to your site, as they could have been inspired by one piece of your content and may have found the rest of your content to be trash. Alternatively, they may have had strong opinion about your content and wanted to voice their opinion.

In the judging of the success of individual posts, keep in mind that more goes into it than the raw traffic figures. Also take into account the number of comments, and the way your visitors perceived the post – either negatively or positively, and their siding with your ideas.

When you have comments turned off your have to go through a series of steps in order to leave a sentence or two reply, it becomes much more difficult for your visitors to leave  their thoughts and remarks on your content. This holds true for nearly everything – both online and offline – the more difficult it is to perform a simple task (eg. signing up for a service), you’ll find more people abandon the process before they have had the chance to complete it.