All bloggers and SEO experts would definitely love to see user interaction and engagement on their blogs as this is the best way to figure out how many users are actually getting interested into your blog’s niche. Generally readers communicate via comments section of a blog. However it is quite difficult to arrange and manage interaction via comments. So there must be some better way to display the visitors’ feedback queries, interactions etc in an organized and logical sense.
Well if you are on a WordPress platform, then you would be more than happy to know that WordPress already provides a great variety of plug-ins to manage and create social communities on a blog. You can use these plug-ins to make your blog more interactive for your users.
Plug-ins to Encourage Interaction
If you don’t want to set-up a social network type of structure around your blog, wouldn’t it be a good option to help your visitors interact with each other in a better way? For this you can either think of setting up a forum or enhancing your comment section for making the discussions user friendly. Here are some WordPress plug-ins which can help you achieve this:
Threaded Comments
Threaded Comments plug-in, as the name suggests, makes comment section more manageable from discussions point of you. By installing this plug-in, you can enable your readers to directly reply to a comment and get the response under the same comment rather than appending it as a last comment or newest comment.
WP-Forum
A forum gives all readers a more fascinating platform to interact with each other in an easy way. WP-Forum plug-in is going to do the same for you by implementing a simple forum on your blog for users discussions.
Gigya Socialize
This plug-in facilitates you integrate many Social APIs (such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn etc) within your website or blog and allows visitors to get engaged using these social networks. Now visitors on your blog can invite their friends from above mentioned social sites.
Comment Per Paragraph
This is basically a WordPress theme, but there are certain features of this theme which can improve users interactions to a great level. This plug-in allows your readers to comment on individual paragraphs of a post instead of commenting about all post at the end. So, this plug-in enhances interaction by giving opportunity to visitors to comment and discuss things at specific related points.
Plug-ins to develop a Social Network on WordPress Blog
Do you want to set-up a social network on your WordPress websiteinstead of creating a forum or adding more functionality to your comments? Following plug-ins are then the best fit for your needs for setting up a social network like LinkedIn, Twitter etc.
BuddyPress
This plug-in combines the power of a number of social networking plug-ins for WordPress. One can install and set-up it within a matter of few minutes. It has user-friendly interface and enable you to specifically enable or disable certain features as per your needs and comfort. Buddypress has been used by many web design companies and big forums.
Mingle
Mingle is much simpler than BuddyPress and takes considerably very less time in installation and settings. Although it provides somewhat less number of features then BuddyPress, but still can prove of big value for encouraging social interaction within visitors of your WordPress website or blog. This plug-in facilitates users to create and manage profile pages, friend-lists, status posts, notifications, comments etc.
Profiler
Profiler is very helpful WordPress plug-in that creates profile for each registered member on your WordPress blog or website. It also has feature to include Gravatar images to users’ profiles. Also it can be helpful in forming a users directory and can also be used with UserPhoto plug-in.
There are also a number of other social plug-ins available on WordPress, but these are on my top-list. Please share with us, if you know a great WP plug-in for creating and managing social communities for WordPress users and readers.
Saif Ullah is an SEO & Internet Marketing expert working as a social media marketing manager. He loves to play with gadgets and Google. He has been running Saif Ullah Butt for sharing his personal adventures in Internet life. You can catch him on Facebook. Do you want some guidelines in SEO ? Get Quote Now for SEO !
definitely going to use above plugins , i needed to know above above mentioned plugins. thanks a lot saif , but profiler is just for an individual blog members or it is like Author spot ? which plugin should i use for Author profile? thanks
Vivek Bhatt invites you yo check..Intex Aqua 5.0 launched for Rs 9,990/-
try to use custom about author plugin !
try to use custom about author plugin !
Thank you
Hi Saif,
I would consider opening a forum but I also know it would be time consuming.
I use Jetpack for most of these things though. I found Jetpack meets all of my blogging needs and then some.
Justin invites you yo check..The Personal Growth Handbook – Personal Development 101
Hi Justin,
Welcome to my blog. yeah you are right that forums are the best way of marketing and getting more content.
But i do not think that jetpack can give you all features. Does it give feature to make Forum ?
Thank you
I appeared to be extremely pleased to search out this web-site.I desired to appreciate it for your precious time for this great !! I definitely enjoying each little it and I’ve got you saved as a favorite to see fresh things you mention.
These are all great suggestions! Thanks!
You have shared a perfect list
You have put nice reviews about those plugins which are used by many WP owners and after reading this review people who are confused will start using them.