When Rachel asked me guest post here I was a little daunted, I hadn’t written a guest post before and couldn’t come up with any ideas. Then the other night I was lying in bed and had one of those lightbulb moments…5 posts came to me at once, and this one fit in perfectly with AverageGal.com, so here it is.

Top 5 Blog Widgets for increasing your comments and building your Blog Community

So, you have a blog, but do you have regular commentors?  The best way to get regular commentors on your blog is to build up a community around your blog and encourage your readers to leave comments by giving them an incentive. These 5 widgets will help you to build up a community and give them an incentive to Comment.

No.1 – Twitter for Wordpress

This ingenious widget lets you display your latest tweets on your Blog for your readers to see.  Get more twitter followers with this widget and keep them coming back to your blog.  Download Twitter for Wordpress here

No. 2 – My BlogLog

The My BlogLog Widget shows pictures and details of your most recent visitors and links to their BlogLog. It also helps to build your community and allows your readers ease of access to be your social stalker.  When you sign into MyBlogLog you can also get statistics from your site by installing some HTML code very easily.  Get your My BlogLog community up and running and create your widget at http://www.mybloglog.com/.

No. 3 – Top Commentors Widget

Show off your regular commentors with this great widget. It gives your commentors a reason to comment on your site, the more they comment, the higher they get on the list. Personally, I love commenting on sites that have this installed, because I feel very important when I see my name on that list, and I make sure that I keep going back.  Download the Top Commentors Widget here

No. 4 – CommentLuv

Entice your readers to leave a comment by giving them CommentLuv. This ingenious widget sources their latest post from their blog and add’s it’s title and a link to it for other readers to see. Everyone will want to leave comments on your blog with ComentLuv because it might just increase their traffic.Download CommentLuv here.

No. 5 – No Follow Free

The No Follow Free Widget allows your commentors links to be followed by Searchbots and therefore index their sites faster. Download it for free here.

All of these widgets are easy to install, either by installing some simple HTML or installing the download into your Wp-admin/wp-plugins folder and clicking the activate button.

Simple and fast, these easy steps are guaranteed to increase your Blogs Community and Comments.  What are you still doing here? Go get them and start building!

If you have any trouble with these widgets contact me at http://wds.webdsignservers.com

Well, the country just elected someone as President who, among other things, billed himself as a community organizer. All rhetoric aside, my question for you is simple:

Are you a community organizer or a community participant?

Nearly every blog post these days that mentions traffic also includes a section about building a community around your blog. The advice is always pretty much the same with suggestions to Tweet, Digg and Stumble until your fingers bleed. Go post comments on blogs. You get the idea.

I would not argue against any of these suggestions. My own experience is that they do work, and for some folks they work exceptionally well. What I’ll put out here is that the blogs who are doing well are the ones whose bloggers are community organizers, not just community participants.

It’s all about attitude and approach. When I’m stumbling across the web, or posting comments on my feed-read sites, if I find something that really stands out I take a proactive approach. I don’t just comment and hope for the best. I take the time to post a thoughtful comment and then if they’ve really resonated with me I’ll contact the blogger directly through email. I’ll ask or offer to guest post and I’ll let them know what an exceptional job they’ve done.

I try and let my circle of influence know about my new discovery and I’ll encourage them to go see for themselves.

I’ve found that by attempting to organize my community, I’ve become a better blogger and my analytics show that it’s working.

Don’t make stumbling and commenting a rote task. Approach it with the enthusiasm of a child coming downstairs Christmas morning, eyes bright with the anticipation of what might be in those colorful and shiny packages under the tree.

Believe in yourself. Believe that you CAN organize. You CAN lead.

With the right attitude you’ll find that your community will become strong, and all of its members will benefit from your hard work.