At first glance, you may think Highlighter is strictly limited to sharing and/or contextual commenting, but Highlighter has so much more to offer. One of the best parts about Highlighter for bloggers, is it’s ability to double as an editing tool.

Safe, Efficient, and Easy!

As a blogger, you’re always looking for ways to make your content more concise, accurate, and relevant to your readership. Most people would love to hire an editor for their site, but don’t want to just give up their passwords and expose all of your personal information to some stranger or simply don’t want to spend the money. Using Highlighter, you can have your entire site critiqued by anyone you wish without granting access to the backend of your site!

Here are a few ways you can go about having someone edit your site using Highlighter:

1. Turn on Highlighter moderation allowing comments to only show up when they’re approved by you. Once you’ve done this, you can hire someone (or ask a friend) to go through your site and comment where changes should be made and you will be the only one that sees the comments.

2. Share small excerpts of your post or page that may be troubling you and see what others have to say about it before it’s published onto your site.

Let Your Readers Say What They’re Thinking

Another big advantage to using Highlighter is it’s open-editing possibilities. You, the site author, have the option of letting readers do the editing, thus exposing the true interest and focus of your readership while helping to fix any errors. This means highlighting some text on a post to add a reference, quote, or just some background information on the highlighted text.

This encourages readers to expand upon, correct, reference, etc. around an arbitrary selection of a post or page, providing instant feedback to you and your readers.

So what are some ways you can connect with your audience and use that connection to make changes to your site or posts?

1. Give your readers something to question. Let them know you’re unsure of something or just want they’re perspective by commenting on something specific yourself to start up a conversation.

2. Make your readers aware that you would like them to point out flaws or things that should be changed by adding a note by in your post headers like “See an error? Let me know by highlighting it and leaving a comment!”

3. Start using citations through highlighting text. Adding a comment with a note and link will encourage your readers to do the same.

Following through with this strategy means you can then turn around and use all of the information gathered from your readers to critique your blog’s content, branding, and connect with users on a much more personal level (everyone could benefit from knowing their audience a little better).

That’s It! Get Out There and Improve Upon Your Blog The Right Way!

Now you know how to make the most of Highlighter’s editing abilities in a simple and effective manner (and possibly save a few bucks from hiring an expensive editor). Just remember, all of the ideas above are simply suggestions and can easily be expanded upon and/or be whittled down to the most efficient way to receive feedback from your readers. The rest is up to you!