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Blog Engage $500 USD Guest Blogging Qualifying Article

Blogging has really been around since the caveman days. The drawings on the walls told stories about their days or things they wanted others to know about. It could have been about their big hunt that day or telling others what areas to avoid danger. It could have been to barter and trade things amongst themselves.  Archeologists are still trying to translate the many paintings that survived from their day.

The word blogging as we know it online started in the late 1990s and the term was actually coined in 1999 by Peter Merholz in his own blog Peterme.com. The word blog is both a noun and a verb.

When you first started blogging did you think of blogging as another social media network that you had to interact on for traffic?  I know I did not know that when I first started blogging.

But as time went on and you wondered why you were not receiving comments it was time to wake up and take action. Blogging is not just all about writing and putting your words onto the web. It’s about being social with others online. Conversation starters can come right from your blog if you do it right. Of course great content is a major plus when you are blogging. Who would want to comment or share if the content is just so-so?

Of course if you are a Seth Godin you don’t need to.  If you don’t know who Seth is, he is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing. It is the way marketers ask permission before sending an email or newsletter. Seth was also the founder of Squidoo. It is a community website that allows users to create pages (which they call lenses) for subjects of interest. Seth blogs without comments and his blog is still highly read, shared and talked about. But most of us are not Seth. If you want your blog to be read you must share, read others and comment along the way.

There are several ways to comment. My favorite one is the CommenLuv system. It’s easy to sign up and set up. If I can do – so can you! Every time you publish a new post it is included in your comments on other’s blogs. There is also a premium version available. CommentLuv encourages comments and interactions to your posts. It also helps you to build backlinks. We all know how important that is to Google to have your website or blog ranking up there in the search with backlinks. The premium addition has features that will help your posts to go viral. It can show when previous commenter’s click on the social enticement buttons when they commented. It also prevents spam as the comment doesn’t even get entered in to your database unless it passes the rules that you set in the settings. You can even specify what message gets displayed. Very nice! It also lets you set a minimum of words for comments so if someone just says “nice post” it will not be posted. You want comments on your posts to be real.  It also sets the minimum amount of seconds that person has to be on the page to comment to avoid spammers who have everything pre-loaded in programs and just hit the submit button. Those dirty rotten spammers!

Another popular commenting system is called Disqus which has been around since 2007. It is used by over ½ billion people today online. It makes commenting easier and interactive. The plug-in integrates using the Disqus API and syncing with WordPress comments. You have threaded comments and replies as well as notifications via email. You may subscribe or use RSS options too.

You can login via the following with Disqus:

  • name/email
    • Disqus
    • Google
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • Yahoo
    • OpenID

    Another similar one is LiveFyre. LiveFyre  lets you send comments to Twitter and Facebook, but the formatting is little different from Disqus. LifeFryre does not give you any backlink juice and some bloggers like Ana from the Traffic Generation Cafe stays away from it for that reason.  It does offer back and forth commenting which some people may like.
    If you are on Blogger you can use the Blogger comment and it will link back to your Blogger blog. You can also put in your name and URL if you do not have a blogger formatted blog. It does give you several options to choose from. When you comment it does leave backlink to your blog. It does not leave the last post like CommentLuv does.

    Some bloggers prefer the Facebook or Twitter login. I am not a big fan of those. I prefer to drive traffic and backlinks to my main sites rather than Facebook and Twitter which I do use as well but not for commenting.

    I prefer sharing the posts. The mother of all plug-ins for sharing is DIggDigg and I just love this one. I learned about it from Ms. Ileane. I had to ask as I had seen in on various websites and really wanted it as it has many features including the Blog Engage share button too!  You can pick and choose from many different social bookmarking sites with their share button.  You can use it on the side bar or under and/or above each of your blogs posts.

    So how does this all make blogging a two-way street? I find it similar to being on Twitter – you have conversations with others bloggers on their posts and you get to know them better. What better way than to comment and go back and forth over points on posts on which you agree or disagree? Isn’t that what social is all about? It’s like being around the fire pit and discussing issues of the day.

    Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

    About Lisa Buben

    Hi There my name is Lisa, I’m the blogger of Inspire To Thrive. I own a personal blog about Inspiring Each Other To Thrive Online through Social Media, Blogging and SEO @lisapatb and like us on facebook Be sure to add me as a friend, Lisapatb

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