Today I’m doing a review of the new Social Connect cloud based software.

So what is Social Connect? In short its a comment system and while at first that might not seem to impressive (at least to me it didnt) as tested it I started to realize that it does actually provide a lot of advantages to people who use it.

Web masters use comments all over the place, because they are a great way to not only get feedback but also to engage with your site visitors. Comments are built into WordPress. They are on websites. They are on sales pages and even on promotional pages such as bonus pages or review pages (so prospective buyers can ask questions). However there are a few issues with the way many people choose to integrate comments. Most of these issues are caused by the fact that people tend to use some sort of generic commenting system, for example the Facebook comments widget.

Some example of these deficiencies are the inability to build your email list from the people who comment. Another is the lack of social features, such as notifications that get sent out via automated emails when someone else replies or likes one of their comments. This lacking in traditional comment systems really hurts engagement as these notices are likely to bring the original commenter back to your site / page. The lacking of automated moderation is a big issue as well. I can tell you first hand, just from running this blog, that there are frankly some weird people online that post some really strange things in comments. Some of it is spam posts and some of it is just down right nasty. Moderating those comments takes up a considerable percentage of my time.

Social Connect is a comment system that you can add to your blog, website, sales page, review page (anywhere you can paste in the Social Connect code). It does this by being a self contained, full featured comment system.

With Social Connect you can optionally require people to sign up in order post a comment. You can allow people to sign up manually by entering their information or it also supports log in with Facebook and log in with Twitter. Requiring people to signup gives multiple advantages. The most obvious is that you can build your email list from people who comment. The second less obvouse is that this is a deterrent to trolls who would spam your site, especially if you use the log in with Facebook as people tend to be less likely to act crazy if they are not anonymous.

Once people signup to comment they can make comments, add images (great for support pages), and post links if you choose to allow it in your settings. They can also reply to other peoples comments as well as like / dislike peoples comments. If you like you can also set up the system to send out automatic notices to people who trigger specific actions.

Of these instant notification options probably my favorite is the one that goes out when someone tags you in a post. Tagging is a big deal on Facebook. Im sure we have all gotten emails from Facebook telling us that someone tagged us. When people do they normally very quickly head over to Facebook to see what the tag was all about. This is the same concept here. Only people getting tagged will be going back to your site or page. Getting people to return to your site is always a good thing.

As I said moderation of comments can be a big and sometimes time consuming task. Lets be honest there are some .. errr .. interesting .. people in the world, add to that the feeling if disconnect that people often have when they are typing online as opposed to speaking in persona and you will find that some comments can be quite colorful. I have seen comments on my blog that have made me blush, and believe me I have been though a lot in my life, there is not much that surprises me.

While Social Connect has manual moderation as you would expect so you as the admin can delete any comments you feel are not appropriate it also has an automated moderation system.

With this automated moderation you can enter a list of words that will cause Social Connect to automatically reject the comment that contains them (or hold it for approval). You can also automatically reject or hold for approval an comment that has links in or images. An obvouse use for this is to automatically reject comments that have profanities, but you can also use it to filter out spam automatically by having it reject comments with words like : ‘viagra’, ‘credit report’, ‘weight loss’ etc. This automated moderation alone makes using Social Connect worth it. Note: This the automated moderation appears to be a part of the OTO. While I wish it was offered on the FE, the fact that its a part of the OTO does not make me not like Social Connect. I understand that more work was required to add the automated moderation, and more work deserves more compensation.

When I first tested I noticed one or two very slight bugs in the display. I sent the vendor screen recording videos pointing them out and they where quickly corrected. However after testing I did notice three other minor things, that while are not bugs, could improve the system.

The first thing I noticed is that the social log in buttons only show on the sign up page, not on the registration page. I think it makes sense to have them on both pages if they are enabled.(Update: the vendors have read this review and the social logins are now on both pages) 

Second I wish that people who make comments where able to edit their comments later. As it currently is they can only delete them, not edit them.

Finally I noticed that the system will show the number of people who are ‘online’. It gets this number from the people who are logged in.  What this means is that if people just leave the page, without logging out, the system will still show them as being online. In a way this might be a good thing since it makes it look like your comment box is always active, however I wish there was some kind of automatic inactivity timeout that logs people off and removes them from the list of people online automatically.

Neither of these things are bugs though, they are more like suggestions for improvement. Overall I think Social Connect is a very good system with a lot of options and functionality. While it may not have the ‘hype appeal’ of some push button get rich quick products (that are often nonsense) it is in fact what a good software should be. Its a functional tool and frankly its just a better, more engaging way to use comments, while also building your email list.

You will get instant access to a huge bonus pack provided by the vendor. Below are some of them:

But frankly there are just to many bonuses in the vendor pack to list here. Just send your receipt ID to ruteckyb@yahoo.com to claim all your bonuses.

Click here to get Social Connect and all the bonuses!
A quick note about the reviews I do on this site. The product vendors give me access to their products for free in order for me to do my review. However I make no promises to them regarding the results of my tests or what I will write in my review. Should you click a link that takes you to a sales page for a paid product for sale this link will be an affiliate link and I will be paid a percentage of the sales price should you decide to invest in it.

About the Author

Brett Rutecky

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Brett Rutecky is a full time online marketer, web developer, and entrepreneur. He has developed scores of Facebook apps, dozens of custom web sites and hundreds of scripts.

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