I've been blog-hopping a lot of late and have noticed just how many blogs now have the Disqus commenting system installed. It has a lot going for it and is so thoroughly interconnected that it's pretty much a social network in itself.

For example, if you go to a popular blog that uses the system it will have lots of comments. You can then look at the profiles of those who made them and see what other sites sites they've added their thoughts to. So it's a great way to find related blogs that have the platform.

There are so many of them you'll never run out of new ones to find and engage with. You can spend your whole time in the world of Disqus. It's a little like Facebook in this regard, although it's not a "walled garden" like that site is. It's more of an extension of the blogosphere.

The other thing I like about it is that once you make comments they're all archived on the system and kept in the one place. So it's a bit like a separate blog comprised of all your comments on others.

This is a real bonus because when you comment on blogs normally it's very hard to keep track of which ones you did contribute to, as well as what you actually wrote. But on Disqus they're all there right in front of you. You can then use that content as the basis for longer articles and posts down the track if you wish.

I wrote earlier about how being very active on Twitter will lift your account in search engine results. I've just had more confirmation of this phenomena. Lately, I've been spending much less time on Twitter with my two main accounts. They've dropped substantially in the rankings when I search for my name. Of course this might be due to other factors. But I doubt it because the same thing has happened to both accounts.

So this is something to remember. If you you keep active within Twitter, you're sure to gain followers at a faster rate than if you don't use it much. You'll also appear in search engine results more often. That may get you some more followers as well.

The key to getting the most out of a Facebook Page is to get conversations going on it. If you do that, you'll get the people who have liked it already returning more often. And because some of their FB friends see that they've been commenting there, you'll eventually draw some of them to it as well.

But it seems that a lot of businesses hardly do this at all. They just use their Pages to announce sales, discounts, events and other promotional stuff. Of course they should be doing all this, but they should also be trying to generate engagement as much as possible.

I suspect that a lot of people in business don't get conversations going because they can't think of what else to put up there. My advice to them would be that you don't have to generate all that content yourself. If you're in business you'll be keeping up to date with news related to your industry. So you can link to those articles and ask for input from your fans. Then once you've received some comments you'll have something else to write about.

Also, much like with blogs, if people arrive at your Page and see that it's active with lots of reader input, they'll be more likely to write their own comments.

Then there's the effect that activity has on Facebook's inner search algorithms. Sure, the social network is nowhere near as sophisticated as Google in this regard. But more activity and engagement are sure to make your FB Page easier to find within the site.

It's always a good idea to put a lot of thought into naming your Facebook Page. You can give it a custom username after it gets 25 fans. But it's pretty much unchangeable after that, apparently. So it's a lot like giving a website a domain name.

If the Page is for business then I would recommend using your brand name. If not, it's a good idea to put a keyword or two in there. This is because people do find pages via the search engine within Facebook. And while it's pretty basic at the moment, it's getting more and more sophisticated. It's also getting used a lot more, too. (Then there's the fact that Facebook Pages are indexed by search engines. So you might be able to draw some extra likes that way.)

You also want it to be descriptive and easy to remember. Considering that it's prefaced by www.facebook.com it's a good idea to make the username reasonably short if possible so that the whole thing isn't too long.

Remember also that one of the best ways to get more likes is by interacting with other Pages like your own. And whenever you share a link, observation or comment the name (as opposed to username, which appears in the domain) is visible. Now if you have a descriptive keyword or two in there too it will pique the curiosity of some of that Page's fans and they'll have a look at yours. So you should give that a lot of thought as well.

For example, I have a political community page. It's right of centre, basically conservative and mostly focused on the Aussie issues I blog about. With these aspects in mind I took a branding angle for the username and chose MattHaydenBlogs. When it came to the actual name I decided on "Conservative Blogs AU". This is what will appear next to all my interactions with other Pages, so readers will be clear about what my perspective is. (BTW, I managed to make this change with only 17 likes so far. So it seems that the 25 like minimum is not set in stone.)