Rev up Your Blog Comments with Jetpack

Andrew Allemann | November 1, 2018

3 min read

One of the first plugins that WordPress users tend to install is Jetpack, which is made by Automattic, the company that also brings you WordPress.com.
Jetpack is sort of a ‘plugin of plugins’ with features covering promoting, designing, managing and securing your blog.
Included in Jetpack is Jetpack Comments, which lets site visitors leave a comment and interact with comments on your site. In this article we will explore a few settings within the commenting system that can help you grow your blog audience.

Your Comment Settings

To make changes to your comment settings, enter the Jetpack console from your WordPress admin. Then select Settings > Discussion as shown below:

There are three discussion options you can alter to increase engagement on your site. They are numbered on the graphic below:

1- Let readers use WordPress.com, Twitter, Facebook, or Google+ accounts to comment
By default, your blog visitors can leave a comment by logging into their WordPress.com account or entering their email address and name. If you turn on this option, they can also leave a comment using information from their Twitter, Facebook or Google+ account. This makes it easier for people to leave comments. And the easier it is, the more likely they are to comment.
2- Enable comment likes
Most of your visitors won’t take the time to leave a comment but they frequently read the comment threads. If you turn on comment likes, people can choose to ‘like’ comments they agree with. This gives them a way to engage with comments even if they don’t want to leave their own.
Once activated there will be a star and “like” below each comment. Visitors click the like link to show their agreement or approval of the comment.
(Note that users must log in to their WordPress.com account or via Google in order like a comment.)
3- Allow users to subscribe to your posts and comments and receive notifications via email
This is one of the most important features to activate because it brings visitors back to your blog.
Once activated, visitors will be able to opt in to receiving email notifications whenever you post a new blog entry or if someone comments on the post they subscribed to.
There are two sub-options to decide if people should be able to subscribe to either your new posts or comments on the existing post.
Subscribing to comments is particularly important. If someone is monitoring or commenting on a post, this will notify them if someone else leaves a comment. They are likely to visit the post again to see what the new comment is.