05.31.06
Bringing More Interactivity to Your Blog
What makes blogs so unique from static web sites is the option for user interactivity through comments. It is the goal of every blogger that their entries spark a heated discussion in the comments forums on their site. Increased user interactivity will help to increase the number of repeat readers your site receives – coming back to check for updated comments, new poll statistics, etc, which cannot be found in your RSS feed. Each of these visits is a new page view and each of these has the chance of clicking through one of your paid advertisements. Remember, it’s all a numbers game.
Yesterday I added a new feature to CyberWyre, the CyberWyre Poll. This will permanently rest in the sidebar of the site and contain the current reader poll – I’d like to encourage all of you to participate. Adding a poll to your blog serves to add one more level of user interactivity, beyond simply comments. Bloggers love statistics and numbers (just look at the success of the high paying keywords page for an example of that) – poll results and the following analysis of these results will make for an interesting article.
How to Setup Your Own Poll
I am using the WordPress plug-in WP-Polls 2.1 (beta), written by Lester Chan, which has an excellent AJAX style voting system and great backend configuration menus. It was very easy to install (just follow the instructions and you should be okay), however I did do a few modifications myself to the PHP but this was custom to CyberWyre requirements.
When you have added a poll to your blog, take note that while a poll can help to increase user interactivity on your site, it can also demonstrate to your readers how inactive it truly is.  A low number of user submissions may give the (possibly false) message that your site is not well trafficked and discourage repeat visitors. Keep an eye on your poll and ensure that it is being used – make sure to place it in an easily visible location on your site and bring attention to it with a post to your blog, encouraging readers to vote.
Check it out for yourself and add a poll to your own blog.
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Your AJAX poll doesn’t work with Opera.
(Windows XP Media Center Edition, Opera 9 Beta2).
Not working for me either but a good idea.
Christian,
Thanks for the into — I actually don’t use Opera so I haven’t tested under that browser. I’ll see what I can figure out.
Thanks for this great plugin! Works fine – only my old PDA doesn’t understand UTF-8 – most blogs are coded like this – so special characters aren’t displayed correctly.