visitTop 5 Blog Widgets
- November 12th, 2008
I’m honored to be able to share another guest post from a fellow blogger, whom I’ve met through my networking efforts - Ciara from WebDesigners. She’s got a plethora of ideas and is an amazing resource for all of us up-and-coming bloggers to learn from. Read on to check out her tips on building your blog community with the use of these 5 blog widgets!
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
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Hi Rachel,
Thanks for the amazing Bio! I’m honoured to be posting on AverageGal.com, thank you for the opportunity.
@Webdesi3: Hey Ciara. Some great points there! Definitely a few things to consider when (eventually!) I get round to commercial blogging
Ciara,
These are great widgets. I use most of them and I know they make a difference. They are truly easy to download and use as well.
I also use comment relish, which sends a thanks for commenting email to commenters. The jury is still out on that one - I think it probably annoys some folks but I’ve not received any complaints (yet)
Great post. I like reading your stuff.
Cheers
George
@ Tumblemoose - Hi George, I actually like it when I recieve those thank you for commenting messages from your blog:) I think its a good idea!
I like the comment luv plugin…I currently don’t have this on my website but plan to add it ASAP. Thanks for the great info Webdesi and posting AverageGal.
Useful list. Thanks!
Hi Rachel and Ciara - What a great list. I already use CommentLuv and rated it as the best community building plugin. I’ll have to check into the others and see if they would work on my blog. Thank you for sharing.
Rachel and Ciara - this is a great list - I use a couple of these, and now I’m thinking I should look into these otehrs - thanks for the info!
@FixThePig - You should install the ComentLuv plugin asap, as theres a contest running, where commentors can win prizes, given out by ComentLuv.com, check it out and register your blog.
@ Barbara Swaford - Thanks and I hope the others work out well for you.
@ Lance - Your welcome, If you use commentLuv, check out the contest for your own blog.
Hello Ciara (I finally know your name!) great list of plugins. I just love CommentLuv, in fact my post was about just that subject today. I have on my list of “things to do” to research what the “nofollow and dofollow” terms mean. Sounds like a post for Tuesday Tips!
Thanks for the list of widgets, Ciara. Never heard of them but will definitely try No Follow Free and Twitter for Wordpress.
MyBlogLog is a good one…I’ve connected with quite a few new people through my blog after I installed it. Great list, and thanks for sharing!
Matt
http://smallbizbee.com
@ BloggerNewbie - No follow basically means the search engines won’t follow it, its mainly used for websites that don’t want certain content followed. Its used the meta tag, with no index so that search engines won’t store any information.
Blogs use it for all comments so that when you type in a blog url it dosn’t get millions of hits from all the comments that the owner left. But by removing the no follow, with no follow free or do follow, you get more hits on seacrh engines and increase your rank. Search Engines hate it because its a big part of the war between blogs and Search Engines.
I just saved this post on my delicious account, I will be applying some of these widgets to my blog later tonight. Thanks!
Thats a nice list Ciara. I’m a plug-in freak and using all of them and find them gr8. Thx for putting them together.
MyBlogLog is my all-time-favorite
Here’s why:
I get to hear about the latest blogging news and red-hot topics within my niche.
I get to meet other bloggers
I get to build a bigger network of fellow bloggers
This could be used for whatever niche, regardless it’s profitability…
Are they all Wordpress Widgets?
OK, I did some research (Google Search) and found out that 3 of them can be used with Blogger too.
Regarding #2)MyBlogLog, It is not the only one widget that offers this. BlogCatalog offers a similar one. As far as stats are concerned, only Google Analytics can give better results. Also, MBL gives present day info to premium users only. However, look wise, nothing beats MBL widget!
These are some great tips, namely the one about commentluv. Some of these are new to me, so I’m anxious to try some of these out on my own site.
Nice template. Where can i download it?