Adding Disqus and AddThis to Make Blog More Social
It’s almost impossible to keep track of all the latest widgets, gadgets, plugins and features available for bloggers. New stuff is coming out daily, which is understandable, there are millions and millions of bloggers, and many of them are very dedicated to blogging — that’s a nice market with interesting opportunities.
Few companies have really capitalized on bloggers (except those helping them generate revenue). I expect a lot of those that offer “nice add-ons” will fall off the radar eventually. But some will survive, do well, and ultimately get acquired.
Blogs are meant to be social things. (Just ask folks like Chris Brogan and Liz Strauss.) Blog success can be measured by many things (and it varies for each blog owner) but the social nature and social quality of a blog is certainly one measure. I would measure the social nature of a blog through a few things — including comments and content sharing.
With that in mind, I’ve added two features to improve Instigator Blog’s “socialness”:
- Disqus: Disqus is a commenting system. As you can see below this post, Disqus powers my comments. Others in this space, who offer commenting and other related features, include SezWho, Intense Debate and JS-Kit. I chose Disqus because of the recent buzz around it (and the fact that I’m a fan of Fred Wilson, of Union Square Ventures, who invested in Disqus).
I like some of the things Disqus brings to the table — threaded comments, comment management, community, etc. I haven’t really explored the value of my Instigator Blog Disqus Community page, but I know that people who are Disqus members will enjoy the ability to track comments for themselves across multiple blogs more easily.
Disqus isn’t perfect. It’s not easy enough to edit the CSS (it’d be easier if I could host the Disqus CSS file myself), and because they just launched a new WordPress plugin it’s going to be missing things and have some hiccups.
I’ll be looking (anecdotally) at whether comments increase (especially repeat commentors), discussions are more interesting and the management of comments is more efficient and better.
- AddThis: AddThis provides a small button at the bottom of each post that encourages people to share your blog content with others through email, social bookmarking services, etc. I picked it because TechCrunch uses it. I realize that’s not the best reason, but it’s not easy to discern significant differences between the competitors, which include: Add To Any and ShareThis. I know there are differences, I’m just not sure they really matter.
I’ve always hesitated to use this kind of button, thinking that it would add clicks for someone that’s trying to share the content, and not be totally clear. You’ll notice at the bottom of this post I’ve added a snippet of text explaining the use of the button.
A few things motivated me to give it a try, including the fact that these buttons are becoming more prevalent, and the ability for people to share via email. I read a blog post recently saying that most people still share content via email. And Dan Zarrella has his own report on content sharing, which shows that email is used quite frequently (especially by non-heavy social media users / readers). That makes sense.
AddThis has the potential to make Instigator Blog more social if it increases the amount of content that people share. AddThis has some very nice statistics that track what’s being shared and through which service.
Blogs are social animals. They shouldn’t just be about spitting out content, driving mindless traffic and making $0.02 CPM on crappy ads. Granted, lots of people make serious money that way, but it’s not really the point. And while I’m generally overwhelmed by the widgets, features and doodads available (and some blogs overload themselves with “stuff”), I am willing to try new things out in an effort to enhance this blog’s value proposition as a community for people interested in startups, entrepreneurship and social media.
Nice post. I like DISQUS a lot, especially because if I follow someones link and comment on a blog, its much easier for me to now retrace my steps back to the blog - I just go to the DISQUS page and find it. I haven't added the AddThis (or similar) widget to my site yet because I was also trying to see which one to use, but I think I'll end up going with it as well.
Thanks for the positive feedback. We'll see how it goes. So far I don't have too many complaints.
That's plugins an must install or just join as member?
I haven't use these services yet because I am still a newbie. My blog is still new and I am considering of registering with the two services mentioned above. Thanks for sharing. Really appreciate it.
These are like plugins. Both of them have WordPress plugins, but I just embedded the necessary code to make them work.
How are they making a fortune?
As bloggers, we can overdo widgets. I come across some blogs that load extremely slowly because of all the widgets on it. I generally don't frequent those blogs because it takes so long to view the page. It's just easier to go to another blog.
So how many non bloogers will continue to visit a slow-loading blog?
Well,
you can find loads of simmilar widgets on the internet, it's just a matter of will and patience.
But that disqus stuff seems to be really useful..
Thanks for sharing!
Disqus seems to be a great idea whose time has come. From what I can see though I'm not sure that it will increase your comments. I do think that submitting your blog to the dofollow directories, as you have done with Do Follow Blogs should increase your comments - including this one. With regard to Add This making a fortune, I believe that one of the main goals of widget marketing is to generate links back to a website or blog and they certainly have accomplished that.
Since you've started using it, can you tell me if you've found any disadvantage of using AddThis? It looks pretty slick so it seems too good to be true.
Hmmm, Disqus is interesting. My fear is that changing your commenting system is serious. Do your old comments disappear? What happens if I later change to another system? Tricky
Linda - Absolutely. It is very easy to overdo it with widgets, so you have to be careful. So far I haven't seen any performance degradation with Disqus or AddThis, but I always keep an eye on these sorts of things.
Generating links back is great for SEO - but I still don't see how it equates to making millions.
I haven't seen any disadvantages yet, although I don't have anything significant to compare it to. I can't be sure how often people shared my content before, to know if they're sharing more or less. Sharing MORE is really the sole point of AddThis
I don't know. You can visit their site and find out though.
Ron - Old comments don't disappear. Now with the new WP plugin, comments remain in your database, so if you remove Disqus the comments SHOULD stay.
I don't think Disqus imported my trackbacks properly which isn't great, but I expect this is something they'll fix soon.
I love the addthis tool and currently using it on all of my sites
I think add this/share this are great for the social and viral aspects of blogs. Many times I read articles and want to share them and I love when it's made easy.
I tend to agree with your approach - let others test things out, and then use their reviews and assessments to decide what makes sense for you.
I know I'm late to the game, but it's great you're still fielding comments. That's why I really like the idea of Disqus, I can claim my comments if I want to. Also, I don't HAVE to register (I forgot my u/p anyway). So good on Disqus, keep it.
As for AddThis, I consider myself a core social media user, and I can say that you are leaving other social media users out, including me. You should use Add to Any as it contains Yahoo Buzz, FriendFeed and many other services that AddThis still lacks. Another feature of Add to Any I like is this: readers are shown the services they already visit. So instead of waiving 10 services in your readers faces, they are foremost given a link to share or save with what they already use. Very nice. Use the Add to Any one and I'll Buzz and share your next post.
AddThis won't do it for me.
Adam - I've heard about Add To Any - and someone from there has explained some of the benefits. I'm not opposed to trying it, although I don't think it will have that significant an advantage over AddThis; I think the systems are probably too similar for the “average user” of this blog…
But I'm not opposed to making the switch and giving it a whirl after testing AddThis for a bit longer…
These are great tools - do you happen to know if they are valid HTML? I've seen a few that break an otherwise valid site…