Brilliant Way To Wow First Time Commenters (and it’s free, too!)

Confess.  I'll bet the following happened to you too, right?

There you are, happily surfing about on the Internet, and you come across a wondrously shimmering post, the kind that makes angels sing and unicorns prance and your favorite football team actually win the Superbowl!

Suffused by admiration and heart-felt gratitude at the magnificence you've just beheld, you feverishly begin to join that site's community by writing your very first insightful response!

And right after (right after, not 3 seconds later but RIGHT after) you click the SUBMIT button, you behold:

NOTHING OF INTEREST.

You know what I mean, right?  No:

• "Thank you for spending your time on my site!"
• "Thank you for taking the time to comment!"
• "Let me give you something in return for your comment!"

In other words, no personalization at all.

No acknowledgment of YOUR time and effort!

Bluntly speaking….there's nothing that wows your socks off your feet.  

So you leave.  And soon forget about the site.

And…..

And that site owner has just blown a fantastic opportunity to build up their community.

I certainly wouldn't want to be that site owner now, would you? 

But let me let you in to a secret.  I'll confess – I was guilty of that meself….but no longer!

See, it all happened over the weekend.  I had just finished researching some nifty uses of Facebook Fan Pages (and woohoo – it appears that nobody has come up with the unique idea I had envisioned) and decided to relax with my feedreader and see what I could learn.

I came across this great article:

32 Ways to Make Your Blog Suck Less (Blog World 2010)

It was so useful I decided to add my own comment and….

Imagine my surprise when, instead of being redirected BACK to the article, I was taken to a really sweet Thank You page instead!

Jeepers said I, this is marvelous!  I want it for my site too!

So I researched about online, and came up with yoast's great free plugin:

Comment Redirect

It's basic, it's simple, and all it does is redirect first time commenters to a page of your choice.

Talk about something so common-sense….but how many of us actually take the time to apply it?

So!  I installed it, wrote up a ThankYouForYourComments page, configured the plugin and….voila.  It's really really really REALLY great. 

You can test it yourself – click HERE add a comment below and see what is revealed! 

(NOTE – if you've already commented at my blog, you will not see it.  Drop me a line and I'll send you a direct link to the thank you page).

Remember…you have only 1 time to make the first impression….POST-COMMENT.

So take advantage of that.  Your network can only help but grow.

Enjoy,

Barbara Ling