One of the most important parts of blogging, beyond creating great content, is making sure that your blog is comment friendly and social. This means that visitors are able to have in-depth discussions through the comments with extra features. After commenting, they are easily able to share a blog post with others on their favorite social networks, such as Twitter, Facebook, Delicious and others. And finally, if they are interested in getting to know you better, they can easily find your social profiles.

Here are the Top 10 ways to make your WordPress blog comment friendly and social.

10. Ajax Edit Comments

Ajax Edit Comments is a WordPress plugin that allows visitors to edit their own comments shortly after submitting them. Visitors can feel comfortable that their comment is not finalized as soon as they submit it, in case they made a typo. The bonus for you is that you will not have to deal with a lot of requests to edit comments after the fact.

Visit Ajax Edit Comments for more details.

9. Subscribe to Comments

Subscribe to Comments is a WordPress plugin that allows visitors to receive email notifications of new comments added to a post they have just commented on. This will make the conversation on a blog post go beyond just one stop commenting by reminding visitors to come back and respond to new comments.

Visit Subscribe to Comments for more details.

8. CommentLuv

CommentLuv is a WordPress plugin that allows commenters who are also blog authors to leave behind an additional link in their comments to their latest blog post. There are many benefits of having CommentLuv enabled on your site – for commenters (extra incentive to comment), blog visitors (enriches your posts’ comments with related links), and yourself (helps you learn more about your readers).

Visit CommentLuv for more details.

7. Threaded Comments

Threaded Comments is a feature in WordPress 2.7 and above which allows visitors to reply directly to other comments, encouraging more in-depth discussions and making it easier for you to reply to your commenters as well. It can be activated by going into the Discussion Settings of the dashboard and enabling threaded (nested) comments.

Visit Discussion Panel Settings for more details.

6. TweetMeme

TweetMeme is a button that encourages visitors to share blog posts on Twitter. This button comes in two styles, both including a counter for the number of times a blog post is tweeted. It can also be customized to use your @username in the retweet so you can see who is retweeting your article through your mentions / replies. The button can be added directly into the WordPress template theme, through the TweetMeme WordPress plugin, or directly in a post if you want to only push Twitter promotion on certain posts. Toptenz uses tweetmeme, so feel free to retweet this article for practice! Just click the button right above this paragraph to see how it works.

Visit TweetMeme for more details.

5. Facebook Share

Share

Facebook offers a button similar to TweetMeme that allows visitors to easily share blog posts on their Facebook. This button also comes with two styles, with an optional counter for the number of times a blog post has been shared on Facebook. This button can be added directly into the WordPress template theme or directly in a post if you want to only push Facebook promotion on certain posts. Click on the share button above this paragraph to share this article on facebook or visit Facebook Share for more details.

4. Sociable

Sociable is a WordPress plugin that allows visitors to easily share a blog post on a variety of the top social bookmarking and networking sites. This plugin gives the blog owner control over which networks visitors can share the post. If you have a network that you would like to include that is not listed in the 100+ sites to choose from, Sociable offers instructions for how to add the additional site manually. Visit "" target="_blank">Sociable for more details.

3. Sexy Bookmarks

Sexy Bookmarks, like Sociable, is a WordPress plugin that allows visitors to easily share a blog post on a selection of the top social bookmarking and networking sites. Although the number of networks is much more limited compared to Sociable (only 18 to choose from), Sexy Bookmarks is much more graphically appealing. The icons are displayed at half their size, and when visitors hover over them, they pop up. There is also a cute message above the icons that says Sharing is Sexy.

Visit Sexy Bookmarks for more details.

2. Gigya Toolbar

Gigya Toolbar allows visitors to share a blog post on over 70 social bookmarking and networking sites, as well as connect their Twitter account to the toolbar and send out customized tweets. The toolbar also lets you add your Twitter and Facebook Fan Page links, RSS subscription option, Google search for your site, and more. It is conveniently located at the bottom of your website, so visitors can share something they like from any page at any time.

Visit Gigya Toolbar for more details.

1. Cute Profiles

Cute Profiles is a WordPress plugin that allows you to add your social network contact information as icons down the side of your WordPress blog. Cute Profiles offers 50 networks to choose from, although you may not want to add them all since your visitor’s screen resolution may inhibit them from seeing all of your icons.