Disqus and Squarespace Comments Together at Last

Anyone with a Squarespace blog will tell you that, traditionally, the Squarespace commenting system has left something to be desired. Luckily, Squarespace 6 will bring an end to clunky captas and limited commenting options. Not only will Squarespace offer a completely revamped commenting system to accompany their new platform launch, but they'll also be introducing a one-click integration with the popular commenting system, Disqus.

Installing Disqus on a Squarespace 6 Blog

Installing Disqus on a Squarespace blog has always been possible with a little tweaking, but now it couldn't be easier with Squarespace 6. The first thing you need to do is register your blog and create an account on Disqus. It's a simple process. Then, enter your Disqus Shortname for your blog in the corresponding field in the General Settings of Squarespace 6. That's it. Squarespace is going out of their way to make it easy to have an amazing blog or website with powerful features and extensibility. 

Seemless Disqus Integration with Squarespace 6

I recently tried out the new Disqus comments on Squarespace 6 on my KoiStory.com blog about koi fish. I have to say that I'm impressed so far. Squarespace pulled in Disqus without any effort on my part after simply pasting in my Disqus Shortname.

What do you think about the new Squarespace 6 and Disqus comments integration? I've started publishing on KoiStory.com, despite Squarespace's warning that everything is still in beta. I guess it's my way of wanting to use the new platform. Do extra features like one-click Disqus integration make it seem worth the wait? 

5 Squarespace Resources to Drive Traffic to Your Business

Remember the old saying, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Now apply this philosophical thought experiment to your website. Sure, you may have a gorgeous Squarespace site, but if no one is visiting your it, does it really accomplish your online goals? Today I've queued up five handy Squarespace resources to help you drive more traffic to your website or blog.

1. Get Your Bearings with Help & Support

Most of the tips that will follow require a general knowledge of the Squarespace platform. If you're a new Squarespacer, you'll want to become well-acquainted with the official Help & Support site. It's particularly handy for finding your way around Squarespace, and resolving minor issues and questions.

2. Install Measurement Tools on Squarespace

Squarespace's onboard analytics and website reporting package is elegant and informative, but it falls far short of what you'll need to fully understand how people get to your website, what they do once they get there, and if they're interested in what you have to offer. Install Google Analytics on Squarespace in minutes with this helpful article.

3. Track the Most Important Events on Your Website

You're almost ready to set aside Google Analytics. But before we do, it's wise to go a step further and set up a few Google Analytics goals in Squarespace. Why track anything if you can't tell when the most important events occur. This step will allow you to track when people fill out your contact form, click on a link, or even comment on your blog posts.

4. Publish About Your Craft to Build Trust

Download for freeConsistent blogging over time was cited by Hubspot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report as the tactic companies find the most critical to their marketing efforts. The future of online business really is about developing relationships with people, and one of the easiest ways to do this is to give folks a venue and material for conversations through a blog on your Squarespace site. Here's a free Squarespace blogging guide to get you started or improve what you're already doing.

5. Cover Your Basic Marketing Bases

A few marketing basics include making it easier for people to find you, and encouraging them to tell others about your product and service. These principles apply on the web as well, and Squarespace users can use this handy Squarespace marketing checklist to tackle topics such as social media, RSS feeds, SEO, and more.

What tips do you have about driving traffic to your Squarespace website? Is there something you've discovered or use frequently that many people don't know about or fully understand? Share your thoughts in the comments below, or strike up a coversation with me on Google+ (you know you've been looking for a reason to use it!). 

5 Ways to Save Time Blogging with Squarespace 6

Bloggers know better than anyone that most of the challenge in making your blog posts successful is finding the time to blog. This time-intensive marketing tactic can produce new business at a lower cost than most other marketing channels, yet people struggle to embrace blogging because of the time involved. As luck would have it, Squarespace 6 will bring five time-saving new features that will help bloggers publish more efficiently and, as a result, reap the business benefits that go along with a great blog.

1. Social Media Sharing Buttons

The new version of Squarespace will allow you to add social media sharing buttons to your blog through a simple new interface. The setup follows each social network's standard third-party integration process. To enable it, simply click a button within your admin controls and the network turns from grayscale to color, turning on the integration with your blog. From that point forward, readers will be able to share your blog content via the social networks you choose without any cumbersome HTML snippets.

2. Custom Social Media Updates When You Publish

I've never been a fan of having your website auto-publish social media updates when you pubilsh new blog or website content, until now. Once integrated, you can set the update that will go out on each social network once your new blog post publishes. Squarespace has even included a convenient shorthand system that dynamically pulls in post elements such as the post title, author and URL. 

3. Improved Access and Control Over Post Details

I'll personally be saving some of the most time with the next set of new features, all bundled together under the Options section of the blog post editing interface. Squarespace has vastly improved post details access and control. These new features include quicklly adding blog post thumbnail images (for use with excerpts), custom URL control, and the ability to change the author of a blog post.

4. Content Review Workflow Built Right in

Up until now, managing multiple editors in Squarespace hasn't always been easy. But now schedule your posts, mark them as private, or event request review. It will be interesting to see how robust the review interface will be, but often even the most basic of workflows are a vast improvement over the manual processes some editorials teams are forced to adhere to due to the lack of sophistication of their blogging platform.

5. Easier Embedding of Social Content

This last feature demonstrates Squarespace's commitment to being the most elegant and sophisiticated web publishing platform out there. It's still being perfected, but you can now enter the URL of a Twitter tweet or YouTube video, and Squarespace will automatically figure out how to best embed it into your blog post. Once embedded, you can also go in and tweak how it is presented on your site. Talk about a time saver!

What do you think of these new time-saving blogging features of Squarespace 6? What features save you the most time when you're blogging? Does the writing itself or a lack of efficiency features baked into your blogging platform contribute to more of your time-related challenges with blogging? 

Squarespace 6: Multiple Authors and Community Blogs

Squarespace has always supported multiple content publishers and editors per each website on the current version of their web publishing platform. That said, Squarespace support for multiple authors hasn't always been as comprehensive as it could be. Squarespace 6 promises new functionality for blogs and websites with community authorship. Take an exclusive look at how Squarespace has simplified permissions and beefed up support for member profiles.

Streamlined Support for Multiple Editors

Squarespace has always done a decent job of providing multiple levels of permissions and access to a website. According to Brandon Davenport, founder of the popular multi-author tech blog, Okay Geek (and co-host on the unofficial Squarespace podcast, Content, Structure & Style):

"The Squarespace system has been spot on when it comes to managing larger teams of people. You can easily create different “audiences” which contain a set of specific permissions. These could be things like which pages are visible or different editing capabilities for certain authors. You can then assign specific people to an audience and give each person the abilities attached to the assigned audience."

The new interface for creating editors appears to be much more streamlined than what is currently in Squarespace v5. Contributors are created based on the major groups of tasks on your website, not by each grouping individual permissions together one-by-one. 

By the looks of things, Squarespace has been listening to its customers' feedback. Roles created specifically for billing, administration, and even comment moderation will simplify the task of defining permissions for multiple editors on a website.

Creating Rich Member Profiles on Squarespace 6

Squarespace currently supports multiple authors on Squarespace blogs and websites, but customers have been pushing Squarespace to add more social features and profile information. Davenport commented,

"Something that threw us a curve ball was profiles. We really wish we could have a profile page for each of our editors that they would be able to edit and build upon (add bios, photos and social networks)."

Squarespace 6 brings robust new features and controls to highlight editorial staff and provide greater opportunities for their recognition, enagement, and the growth of your blog's community.

Squarespace will now support custom avatars for editors right out-of-the-box. Your authors will also have the ability create a custom profile and attach their social media profiles to their Squarespace profiles. I'm not sure about photos, or how robust the profile pages will be, but the new features will be welcome additions.

Squarespace even seems to be exploring the relationship between authors and location. With the new location tab, authors can share their home base with your audience. It's exciting to see Squarespace push their platform to the limits of how people are using their websites today and into the future.

The social web is about creating greater opportunities for personalization and engagement. The new profile and permissions features contained in Squarespace 6 will provide greater opportunities in these areas for community blog/websites with multiple authors. What features are you hoping to see for Squarespace user profiles in version 6?

Squarespace Guide: 5 Steps to Marketing Your Website

You picked Squarespace as a web publishing platform because you wanted a website that was easy to design, build, and edit. But just having a website doesn't guarantee that people will actually visit it. A few marketing tactics here and there can go a long way to bring in new business through the Internet. Here's a brief 5-step Squarespace guide on marketing your website.

Step 1: Invest in Your Website Design

Your website is now often the first thing about you people encounter, and first impressions count as much as ever. Potential customers judge the quality of your services based on the quality of your website. It sounds odd, but even for completely unrelated services such as landscaping, a more aesthetically pleasing website will usually yield more customers. Take the time to invest in the design of your Squarespace website, or get to know a great Squarespace designer.

Step 2: Take the Time to Start a Blog

According to HubSpot's 2012 State of Inbound Marketing Report, 81% of businesses now indicate their blog as "useful to critical for their business." If you're not blogging at least once a week, you're missing out on a potentially big source of new business. Download our free Squarespace blogging ebook if you're looking for a good strategic Squarespace guide on blogging.

Step 3: Connect Social Media to Your Brand

People are more likely to share and interact with your business through social media if you're actively blogging and updating your social media statuses. Make it easy for people to share your website content by installing sharing widgets on your Squarespace blogs. Simply copy and paste a little custom code in most cases to install sharing widgets for Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Feedburner, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and even Pinterest. 

Step 4: Earn Extra Traffic from Google with SEO

Squarespace is always very happy to share how SEO-friendly the website platform is, and how you shouldn't need to invest extra SEO efforts as a result of their fantastic infrastructure. Website platform aside, it also takes a solid content strategy, a link/social outreach plan, and plenty of other Squarespace SEO tactics to maximize your potential for search traffic to your website. Invest a little efforts in your SEO strategy for additional traffic from search engines.

Step 5: Measure Your Marketing Efforts for Free

The Internet is the most measurable marketing medium yet thanks to tools such as Squarespace's onboard analytics platform. But to unlock even greater insights, install Google Analytics on Squarespace. The free web analytics platform allows you to track form fills, blog comments, and just about anything else. Don't fly blind when you can produce detailed reports to tell you which of your efforts are most successful. 

Done right, you'll take a few major leaps forward in your online marketing success if you implement the five steps in this little marketing Squarespace guide. What questions do you have about marketing your website on Squarespace? What do you think a good strategy should contain?