Get Personal With Your Commenters – Boost Your Subscribers (Video Guide)

Site Promotion, WordPress | 44 comments

Best way to boost your blog popularity is by converting your visitors into readers. Nothing can beat loyalty of repeat visitors because they actually like what you have to say. But how do you accomplish such a difficult task?

Many people don’t necessary arrive to your blog on your front page and might have landed on page that interested them but wasn’t the best example of your work. How do you draw people deeper into your blog and present them with your best work. Well, if they commented – you have an excellent option!

I want to present to you a WordPress plugin I have found to be incredibly useful on my own blog and I will actually show you step-by-step how to install and configure it. Plugin called Comments Relish and it will email each First Time commenter with your personal message – there is your chance to draw the person in. Watch the video for details.

Relevant resources:

Comments Relish plugin download page
One Click Install plugin download page

Update: Unfortunately original plugin has a resource utilization issues and can cause problems on shared hosting. But fear not. Here is a link to a blog post where all those issues have been addressed and plugin works quite nicely.

NOTE: If your blog sends email to every comment made by a persona on your blog you need to take a look at database and determine if cr_emailed table was created. It supposed to do it during activation but failed to work for me. Here is SQL code you can use to create a table (special thanks to Patchlog for pointing it out):

[mysql]CREATE TABLE wp_cr_emailed (
emailed_ID mediumint(9) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
time bigint(11) DEFAULT ‘0’ NOT NULL,
email varchar(255) NOT NULL,
UNIQUE KEY emailed_ID (emailed_ID),
INDEX ( email )
);[/mysql]

44 Comments

Newer Comments →

Geek Hacks on August 16, 2007 at 6:58 am

Great! Thank you very much for answering my questions.
Geek Hacks on August 16, 2007 at 10:09 am

Hey there,
Thanks for sharing us this great WP plugin, I’m just going to install and test it on my blogs.

Cheers.
- TheSpot-er on August 16, 2007 at 6:22 am
  
  Sure thing!
  
  Its a great plugin 🙂
  
  Alex
Geek Hacks on August 16, 2007 at 10:24 am

TheSpot-er, could I also ask you what plugin are you using for the “Share This” feature under each blog post?
Thank you.
- TheSpot-er on August 16, 2007 at 10:40 am
  
  Sure- its called Share This by Alex King … in my WordPress Web 20 guide page – I have links to most plugins I use …
  
  Alex
Patrick Burt on August 16, 2007 at 12:40 pm

I’ve been looking for this plugin for a while and just stumbled upon your article randomly. Cheers and thanks m8! *bookmarked*
- TheSpot-er on August 16, 2007 at 11:10 am
  
  Sure thing, make sure to stumble too 😛
  
  Alex
Brian on September 17, 2007 at 2:18 am

Hi Alex,

Great plug-in. Can’t wait to use it. Your blogging info has been a real blessing to me as someone that is relatively new to blogging.

Best regards,

Brian
- TheSpot-er on September 17, 2007 at 2:24 am
  
  Thanks Brian …
  
  Just trying to help by sharing what I know 🙂
  
  Alex
Reinaldo Reyes on September 18, 2007 at 9:43 pm

Alex,

Thanks for sharing all your Word press knowledge. Your Web 2.0 product is the best investment I’ve made, even after the purchase you keep on giving to your customers and subscribers.

thanks

Regards

Reinaldo
- TheSpot-er on September 19, 2007 at 2:15 am
  
  Thanks Reinaldo,
  
  Your kind words greatly appreciated!
  
  Alex
Fab on October 8, 2007 at 11:42 am

Hi Alex,
I installed comment relish yesterday… and I mention it here : http://www.fabnetrevenue.com/2007/10/08/blogging-week-end-accomplishments/

Thanks for the video.
- TheSpot-er on October 8, 2007 at 9:21 am
  
  Thanks Fab!
  
  Glad my tutorial helped someone 🙂
  
  Alex
  - Gerald on December 18, 2009 at 10:08 am
    
    Thank you Alex,
    Very useful. So I guess that unless I do the coding change you mentioned after I install the comment relish plugin there’s a chance it may cause problems? Or have they fixed it?
    - TheSpotter on December 22, 2009 at 2:36 am
      
      Use latest version of the plugin – it is fully working on my blog.
Steve on November 10, 2007 at 5:14 am

Alex,

Thanks for this video – I had heard so much about this particular plug-in, so I downloaded it, installed it an….err….stalled!

Now I’ve got this, I’ll give it another shot, with at least some hope in my poor, forlorn heart that I might this time succeed!

Thanks again

Steve

Steve’s last blog post..Writers Cramp
Donnie Graham on November 29, 2007 at 10:13 am

Hi Alex

I’ve just installed the Comments Relish plugin. Easy as usual with your excellent video help.
Thanks

Donnie

Donnie Graham’s last blog post..Help in the Kitchen
- TheSpot-er on November 29, 2007 at 11:39 am
  
  Thanks Donnie 🙂
  
  Glad it works … that plugin is great and adds that extra touch to your blog to help you separate yourself.
  
  Alex
Luciano Passuello on January 3, 2008 at 1:07 pm

Thanks for this great video presentation. I wish there was an option to delay the relish e-mail (to give a more natural feeling to it), but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Thanks again!

Luciano Passuello’s last blog post..Happy New Year, Every Week
- TheSpot-er on January 3, 2008 at 1:16 pm
  
  Sure thing,
  
  It actually could be a good thing. You grab your commenter attention while your blog is still fresh in their mind 😉
  
  Alex
Len on February 6, 2008 at 2:53 am

Hi Alex!

Great post! Nice video…very informative.

One thing, I used the contraction, in the subject area of the email for and when I upgraded preferences it changed to .
Went back and changed it to , upgraded prefs and it was fine. Not sure if that’s on my end or a glitch.

Len
- TheSpot-er on February 6, 2008 at 9:29 am
  
  Thanks Len,
  
  I haven’t seen the issue you describe and I had plenty of chances …
  
  Must be something on your end.
Dick Ingersoll on June 2, 2008 at 8:33 am

Alex,

It appears this plugin is no longer available do you know of a replacement?

Dick
- TheSpot-er on June 2, 2008 at 9:19 am
  
  Thanks for letting me know!
  
  Here is an Optimized Version of the plugin. Turns out that old plugin had also some issues that made it UNFRIENDLY on sharing hosting! This one fixes the issues:
  
  http://patchlog.com/wordpress/more-optimization-for-comment-relish-plugin/
  
  Alex
Barbara Ling, Virtua on July 24, 2008 at 4:46 am

Excellent resource, thanks! I'll certainly check it out today.

Enjoy, Barbara
TheSpot-er on July 24, 2008 at 8:29 am

This post was re-posted to provide an updated (better) video and because I think it is still very relevant and deserves attention!

Alex
Justin@Airsoft Rifles on July 24, 2008 at 12:50 pm

That is a fantastic plug-in! I could see immediately sending out a message to first time commenters as increasing retaining rates by at least 10 or 20%, maybe even more if the message is written properly.