Whether you’ve been blogging for four months or three years, you’re well aware of the importance of comments. While some people simply think of blog comments as nothing more than a vanity metric, the truth is they’re an amazing opportunity to connect with people who are truly interested in what you have to say. For individuals, this is a great way to network and have new doors opened. And for businesses, having direct access to potential customers used to only be available through spending a lot of money.
Because comments are such an important part of blogging, you want to make sure you have the right system in place. Since there are several popular choices, it’s worth looking at the pros and cons of each one:
Native WordPress Comments
As a result of the popularity of WordPress, this platform’s native commenting system is the default choice for the majority of bloggers. One of the strengths of this system is by simply enabling Akismet, blog owners can drastically reduce the number of spam comments they receive.
It doesn’t take much technical knowledge to change the look of these comments. Since this platform is directly built into WordPress, it’s very easy to manage comments and all of the settings related to them. Another benefit of everything being local is that the comments load quickly and without any issues. The main drawback is they don’t offer every advanced feature that can be found in other platforms.
DISQUS
One of the most common compliments of this system is that it’s very easy for blog owners to install. Many also appreciate that fact that using DISQUS makes them part of a community. This can also be appealing from a user’s perspective.
The one issue that some bloggers have with DISQUS is since accounts are stored on this service’s servers, bloggers don’t have local control over them. As a result, it may be difficult to resolve any issues that arise.
Although Facebook’s commenting system is the newest of the three platforms, it has made a lot of traction in a short amount of time. Since most Facebook accounts are for real people, one of the key features of this system is that it holds people accountable for what they say. Instead of being able to leave an anonymous comment, people have to put their name next to whatever they say. While it’s possible to make a fake Facebook account solely for the purpose of leaving comments, that’s a lot more work than typical comment trolling.
For large blogs, this accountability may improve the level of conversation. But for other blogs, privacy may be an important part of commenting. For example, a medical blog that encourages readers to share their issues isn’t going to want to force them to divulge sensitive information under their real name.
The other potential downside to Facebook comments is they can add to a site’s loading time.
Craig Klein is the president of a Sales Nexus which is a CRM software & email marketing company.
Sathishkumar Varatharajan is an Online Marketer and a Full time blogger from Salem, India and he is one who launched this blog on June 10, 2010. After working alone on this blog for almost 7 months, he finally found a partner by the name John Rampton, an experienced Affiliate Marketer who helps him to uncover the true potential of TechieMania.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it depends on personal preference and my own blog used CommenLuv plugin. And Disquss is also good but from some sources I read the links aren’t counted by Google..
WordPress is anytime better than other blogging platforms. Be it for comments or be it for blocking spams, the plugins that are available in WordPress are awesome.
what about keyword luv and comment luv. I hear they are good for comments. Can you also do an article on them?
i would say that commentluv premium and keywordluv are the best plugins for the blog commenting.