As writers, digital publishers, marketers, and networkers, you’re constantly crafting your next blog post, composing upcoming newsletters, and brainstorming captivating social media captions. No matter what the project is, it’s always important to promote your work, making sure readers can relate to the content you're publishing. Digital publishers are regularly thinking about how they can convert their readers into subscribers or converting their audience into loyal, paying customers. Audiences today expect creative, educational, and even entertaining copy. Ignoring this demand would be a disservice to your hard work-- at the end of the day, writing effective copy is writing words that result in better conversions. Here are 5 common copywriting mistakes to avoid:

As Disqus continues to grow and evolve, we want to take a pause and highlight some of the hardworking and very talented team members that make the company what it is today. This week, we chose to interview one of our incredibly skilled backend engineers to give you a sense of what it’s like to work here and how we like to operate. 🤓

Attracting readers to your site and getting them to regularly come back is no easy feat, especially in an environment that is constantly changing shape. Experimenting with new strategies, and adjusting existing ones when needed, is the best way to adapt to this evolving digital landscape. One of our major objectives at Disqus is to equip our publishers with all the tips, tools, and knowledge they need to accomplish that. This week, we decided to look at one of our favorite Disqus sites, Gothamist, as a source of strategy inspiration. ✨

Last year we released reactions to give publishers and commenters a new way to engage and since that time over 70 Million reactions have been posted globally! Today we are releasing an upgraded reactions feature, that provides more creative freedom for our Pro and Business publishers. They can customize their site reactions and we can’t wait to see the creative ways they use this feature to engage their communities. We’ll post some of our favorites on Instagram and Twitter in the coming weeks.

Although blogging has been around for more than two decades, there are still a number of misconceptions about this form of writing. From worries about qualifications to fears that the blogging trend itself is on the outs, these false impressions leave some people feeling apprehensive about the process. Today we are here to bust those myths and set the record straight! We gathered a handful of statements that we hear quite often and debunked them one by one to put any blogging unease to rest… so let’s straighten things out once and for all!

Consistently creating original and valuable content is tricky. When you’re regularly publishing new articles, it can be challenging to brainstorm fresh and relevant topics. A reliable and consistent supply of content, however, is important to keep readers engaged, loyal, and invested in your site. This is not to say you need to churn out several pieces of content a day to keep your audience interested, but you do need to remain a dependable source of quality information. So what do you do when it’s time for a new post, but you’ve exhausted all of your recent thoughts and ideas? Interviewing experts within your industry is a great way to generate fresh, new content! 🙌

Calling all publishers looking to take their audience-building-efforts to the next level. We have the answer for you: live events! 🎉 If you’re a publisher just starting out, don’t hit the back button quite yet. While you may want to focus on establishing your online presence and nurturing an involved, on-site community first, live events are a useful strategy you can employ down the road, and it’s never too early to start planning!

Instagram is one of the leading social media platforms, with 1 billion active monthly users. The popularity of the platform, especially amongst younger audiences (over ⅔ of users are under 35), makes it an attractive outlet for publishers looking to extend their reach and promote their brand. Instagram is also a highly engaged platform with various opportunities to create content aimed at prompting user responses, which ultimately helps publishers connect with audiences and build loyalty🤩

One of this summer’s hottest films hit theaters last Friday, and this highly anticipated live action rendition of The Lion King took us on a rollercoaster of emotions: we laughed, we cried, we cheered, we boo-ed (*cough, cough* Scar). For those who haven’t seen it, I warn you to stop reading now--cause spoilers!--but if you’re familiar with the original, you know what’s coming. In the months leading up to the film, and over the weekend especially, people flocked to the Internet to discuss Disney’s latest remake. From the highest of praise to flat out disappointment, comments about the new Lion King covered an array of sentiments--let’s see what Disqus commenters thought!

Today, after careful consideration and much feedback from our commenter community and publishers, we disabled Collapsed Replies across Disqus and reverted to the original thread format. We initially released Collapsed Replies (a new way of displaying comments within long threads) in March. The intention was for it to be the new default experience on Disqus. However, after listening to feedback, we realized that the update, at this time, is not the appropriate default experience.

Today we’d like to announce an exciting new feature -- Star Ratings! 🤩 The new Star Rating feature, which allows readers to rate content from one to five stars, is now available to all of our Pro and Business publishers. Ratings provide another opportunity for audience engagement, giving readers an easy means of actively participating in the conversation. On average, engaged readers consume about 4 times as much content compared to passive readers. Focusing on converting more passive readers into active participants will result in more time on site, direct traffic, and audience loyalty.