Blogopoly

One of the great things about having a forum or bulletin board as part of a website is that it provides extra content for readers and a chance for the audience to interact with each other and sometimes the website author.

Blogs can also achieve this level of interaction - simply by setting up a commenting system. Some blog platforms such as Movable Type have this feature, but if you are using a platform that doesn't then there are third party providers. This blog uses a free Blogger commenting system, and you can see how it works by clicking on the comments link below. The disadvantage of using a third party commenting tool is that the pages the comments are published to are not part of your site, and someone searching the web may not get to your site via search results relating to the comments. If your comments are on the same site as your blog, then this is additional text for the search engines to index.

Once you have a comments feature enabled on your blog, follow these two simple rules to ensure your blog gets the most benefit:

1) Write thought provoking posts that encourage readers to challenge or add further comments. In such posts, invite your readers to leave a comment at the end.

2) Regularly check all comments left on your blog; this gives you an idea of how your blog audience thinks, what they like to read about, and often gives you an opportunity to answer questions they may have. Secondly, check to make sure your comments feature is not being used by spammers, who are just posting to get a link back to their own site from your blog and delete if you can.

If you follow these two rules, then you will ensure that a healthy dialog is established between and with your readers.