The Open Source Marketer

Blog comments are extremely important to the health of a successful blog. But responding to comments in a blog tool like WordPress can be time consuming and awkward. Today we’re going to talk about a WordPress plug-in that can make replying to comments painless.

Successful bloggers know that blogs are fueled by content. In fact, it’s been said many times that it’s important for the blogger to produce content on a daily basis. Publishing articles and short posts on a regular basis is what brings in new visitors and what keeps veteran readers coming back. But, did you know that comments are just as important as the content that bloggers create.

You see comments are free content that the blogger doesn’t have to produce. Comments create a sense of community and encourage reader participation. Comments are an active expression of the reader’s opinion that can add a unique voice to a blog beyond what even the blogger envisioned. Smart bloggers know that in order to increase their content, they must encourage and nurture comments from their readers.

Replying to comments helps generate interest and conversation. When others see a conversation taking place they want to jump in with their own opinions and when comment posters see that someone is responding to their thoughts, they want to reply as well.

However, there is one small problem mixed into all this creamy comment goodness. To encourage readers to comment on their blogs bloggers must actively respond to reader contributed comments. But for the WordPress blogger this process is time consuming and awkward at best. To respond to comments, the WordPress blogger has to review and approve the comments in the administrative area of the blog. Then they have to jump out of the administrative area to that particular blog post to respond to the reader’s comments. This process is part of the default setup for WordPress.

But, there is a better solution. In fact there is a “Better Comments Manager” plug-in that lets WordPress bloggers respond to comments directly from the comments moderation area. The plug-in also allows for mass editing and sorting of comments by blog post. With this added functionality replying to reader comments on a WordPress blog becomes almost effortless (you still have to come up with the words for the reply). That means that the blogger is encouraged to interact with their readers and will in fact be more eager to reply. Ultimately that means that everyone is encouraged to contribute to comments and the whole process just works better.

I first learned about this plug-in on Alister Cameron’s Blogologist blog where he posted a list of resources, one of which was the Better Comment Manager plug-in. I’ve been using it for only a few days now and I can tell you first hand that it has made my blogging life so much sweeter.

Installation of the plug-in is extremely simple. All you have to do is just unzip the “better-comments-manager” folder into your plug-ins folder and activate the plug-in. From there you are able to edit comments and interact better with your readers. I highly recommend it. In fact, if you really understand the value of this plug-in then you’re probably not even reading this post anymore and you’re over there downloading it right now. If not, then go ahead, download it and plug it in. Then come back here and leave your comments about how much you love it. I promise I’ll reply. It’s just to easy not too.

Take care,

Charles McKeever
OpenSourceMarketer.com

P.S. Be sure to read my post about the Top Ten WordPress Plug-ins You Must Have Or Else