Add Social Commenting to Increase User Engagement

Audience engagement can play a large role in keeping visitors on your site for longer periods of time, inviting them to explore related posts or converting them into loyal fans.

On the other hand, there are people who won’t want to create an account on your site just to leave a comment. When this is the case, engagement is limited and it can stifle your community growth, as this group of users might not return to your site again.

Adding social commenting with Jetpack opens the door for more interactions by making it extra convenient for visitors to comment on your posts using their existing social media accounts. And streamlining this process might encourage previously reluctant visitors to share their thoughts.

Let’s review what social commenting with Jetpack entails, and why you might want to activate this handy feature on your own site.

Getting started with social commenting

Commenting with Jetpack replaces the built-in WordPress comment form with one that provides additional ways for users to sign in and leave comments.

Depending on how your website is set up, users might need to register with your site or WordPress before they’re able to leave comments. This means that a new visitor would need to go through a registration process in order to participate in conversations, and this isn’t something that you can always count on happening.

Jetpack makes the process easier for website owners and visitors by expanding the ways that both parties connect. The original local account and WordPress account options have some new friends: Google, Twitter, and Facebook. Many visitors will already have accounts with one of these social platforms, so there’s no need to create new ones.

Even better: many users are automatically signed in. If this is the case, they just have to verify that they want to leave a comment on your site.

A single flip of the “Let readers use WordPress.com, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts to comment” switch under the Jetpack > Discussion tab is all it takes to get started.

Easier ways to connect leads to increased engagement

Allowing site visitors to easily connect to your site through their existing social media accounts can lead to deeper connections, as they won’t need to take the added step of creating new accounts.

The time that they save from not having to create those new accounts might be spent exploring your site for longer periods of time instead. This form of engagement can reduce the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing a single page.

If site visitors can access your pages using their social media accounts, it will also be easier for them to leave comments on your posts. Making it easier for people to leave comments does far more good for your site than you may realize!

Not only will you gain some instant gratification with more “great article, thanks!” comments, but you’ll notice increasing dialogues between other users that have additional insights to share. Your participants will end up adding to the value of your content by offering up new perspectives, opinions, and suggestions.

Create even better user experiences

Any time that you can connect with your audience members on deeper levels through social commenting, shares, or pingbacks, you increase the quality of your user experiences.

Visitors might spend more time checking out your site content, and may browse multiple sections of your website. This improves your overall site engagement and presence, ultimately leading to even more new visitors.

Once you make it simpler for users to connect to your site through their existing social accounts, their increased visits will pave the way for more comments and quality engagement.

Have you configured Jetpack Comments to increase your site engagement yet? If not, there’s no time like the present!

Lance Cleveland

Dad. Explorer. Rum Lover. Code Geek. Not necessarily in that order. Create of Store Locator Plus, the "enter your zip code, find the locations" map solution for WordPress.