Why I Switched (Back!) To The Livefyre Comment System

[Warning! I’m going into blogger-nerd land, here. Not a normal weightlifting post. But, it DOES pertain to you as it discusses the way you’ll be able to comment on the blog now, and how you’ll be able to include your facebook and twitter friends in conversations here, and other cool stuff. So bear with me ]

I’ve now installed the comment system Livefyre on all of the main blogs I manage (which include this one, Weightlifting Academy, and High Octane Body). That means there will be a slight difference in the look and feel of the interface. There may be a bit of growing pains here, but I believe it will be worth it.

What the Hell is LiveFyre?

LiveFyre is just a 3rd-party program or plugin for the blog software that I use to provide y’all with all this fun weightlifting and Zen goodness. It’s like the regular comment system you are used to, but better in a whole number of ways that I think are becoming increasingly important.

The most important of which is the ability to sync up with the major social networks, Facebook and Twitter.

You KNOW I’m a bit of a “new-media” nut, and that you can find me on both Facebook and Twitter at all hours of the day and night, and that I’ll respond to you directly there, just as quickly as if you commented here on the blog.

The problem is that that makes (at least) 3 different places where people are discussing the content of this blog, and not everyone knows that there are other people talking about it.

What would be cool is to find a way to get all the conversations happening on all the platforms to link up.

While this system doesn’t magically do it all, it comes very close to that ideal.

LiveFyre and Social Media

Like I said, the most important reason that got me to make the switch over to using Livefyre on this blog is that it links up with my main social media hangouts, Facebook and Twitter.

But HOW does it do that?

Check it … once you’ve signed into the system or created an account (something you only have to do once, it’ll remember you from then on – more on this below) all you have to do is at-reply one of your friends to get them into the conversation like this:

@MichaelHartman, check out this article, man. It’s soooo wicked cool.

And it will go into Facebook or Twitter (you choose) and send them the link and they can reply back.

In addition to that I can sync it up with my facebook fan pages and anything posted there (on a thread where the particular blog post was linked to) will automatically get sent back here.

How cool is that?!

I love social media because it’s really enabled me to get to know so many of you on a personal level that just wouldn’t have been possible in the past.

Now, we can really integrate a lot of that every time a new post comes out that we’re all into and have questions about.

LiveFyre’s Business Style

(The Livefyre team in San Francisco working on the cool stuff of the future.)

The way the company runs their business may not seem particularly important to your user experience as a reader here in a direct way, but it is in an indirect way.

I’m a big believer in supporting innovative, passionate, and community-minded businesses – that’s EXACTLY the type of business I try to run! Doing business in such a way that you are honestly trying to make the world a better place and bring serious kick-ass value to your clients and customers is the way businesses SHOULD be run, but far too often they aren’t.

This company gets it right. They have really really fast customer service and their staff genuinely care about providing us with the best of what they can give us. That means they’ll keep updating their software to make it better and better in response to what we’re honestly looking for and needing.

That’s how I like to run things, too. And I really respect that. So, it makes me want to support them, and use their shit.

Easy (Enough!) Login

Normally, with a standard wordpress blog theme, the comment system login process is pretty basic: Enter your name, email, and (optionally) your website address.

Livefyre is the same if you want to sign in as a “guest”. OR, you can choose to instead sign in with your Facebook account, your Twitter account, Google+ account, or even create a special account with Livefyre to sync up all those accounts together that will work on ANY blog that has a livefyre system on it – like all of mine do now.

(I recommend the latter. You only have to do it once, and once you do, you’ll be auto-logged in on ALL my sites and can easily comment and at-reply your friends on FB and Twitter, etc.)

So you can make it easy on yourself the first time or really dig in and set yourself up for commenting heaven. It’s totally up to you.

BOTTOM LINE

Livefyre isn’t so much a comment system as an engagement system. And that is what this blog is truly all about. It’s why I create my Samurai Strength videos the way I do (based off of your questions). And it’s why in my new upcoming version of the Samurai Strength book (which will include more than just the book … lots of cool stuff … just wait) I’m beefing it up with jazz that is a direct result of your user feedback.

What makes The Iron Samurai a groovy place (and what I know will make High Octane Body and Weightlifting Academy cool places) is the positive community atmosphere that is driven by YOU.

As I’ve mentioned before, 2012 is the year we all kick things up a notch. Writing an entire post about a comment system may seem a bit silly (it is!), but this is one piece of the puzzle that will make it way easier for us all to stay connected and reach our goals.

New tech can be weird the first time you use it. But it’s often quite worth it … unless we’re talking about Skynet! That’s a totally different story!

 

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