Disqus is designed to help publishers build on-site engagement and retain loyal audiences. We know firsthand from our conversations with you that a lot of hard work goes into this process. That’s why our Publisher Success team is constantly thinking about how we can make your life easier as a publisher. A big part of our strategy is to arm you with information about our product the moment you need it most.

Recently, we released a new Email Subscription feature to help publishers grow their email lists. Many of you requested a way to automatically import new subscribers into your email marketing provider. Today, we’re excited to announce an update to our Zapier integration to automate this task and help you get more done with Disqus.

Zapier allows you to easily create workflows to connect all your favorite apps (over 1,000 to be exact) to do just about anything. Best of all, Zapier requires zero technical knowledge to get up-and-running.

More than ever, we see publishers investing in building direct connections with their readers to cultivate stronger relationships. With the threat of Facebook’s pivot away from publishers, publishers are increasing their investment in on-site engagement, email newsletters, and subscriptions where they own the relationship with their readers.

Last Thursday Facebook shook up the publishing world when it announced plans to make the largest change in years to their News Feed. Going forward Facebook will prioritize content that users share over all other content. This means that, as early as this week, users will start to see less publisher content and more content from their friends and families.

To kick off the new year, Disqus hosted a hackathon recently where teams worked on various projects to explore new ideas, solve interesting problems, and build something cool. At the end of the week, teams demoed their projects to the company who voted for their favorites.

Here are four of the most interesting projects that came out of the hackathon. Let us know what you think in the comments below! If you missed the recap of our last HackWeek, visit this blog post here to learn more.

Recently, we published a series to increasing reader engagement for publishers. Over the course of six chapters, we walked you step-by-step through proven tactics for sparking reader engagement. This journey started with listening to your readers as the foundation for building a strong relationship with your audience. We learned strategies for leveraging comments to craft more engaging content, developed ideas for hosting events to foster a sense of community, and identified common barriers to increased engagement and how to overcome them.

A few months ago, we highlighted 7 small updates to Disqus that you should know about. We’re working to improve Disqus every day through the release of new products like Email Subscriptions. Under the hood, smaller changes are released regularly to improve the experience for both publishers and commenters. Here’s a summary of notable changes we’ve made recently to make Disqus better for you.

If you've read some of our recent posts, you've probably heard us talk the importance of audience relationship building. In a digital publishing landscape where publishers have less control over how readers discover and engage with content due to third party influence, building relationships and establishing direct lines of communication with readers is critical. Recently, we took the first of several planned steps towards helping publishers build relationships with readers at scale with the release of our Email Subscription prompt.

Recently, we were thrilled to see long-time Disqus publisher, Batman-News, profiled on The Hollywood Reporter. It features Chris Begley who leads the helm over at Batman News, a fast-growing fan site for all news about Batman.

Welcome the final chapter of our Ultimate Guide to Increasing Reader Engagement on Disqus! Catch up on Chapter 5 on recognizing top commenters to retain them.

If you want readers to start commenting on your site, it's not enough to just add comments and expect them to figure it out on their own. In this final chapter, we’ll share five solutions to improve your readers’ commenting experience by addressing common barriers to increased engagement. Let’s get started.