How do you encourage more people to commentate your posts?

[blackwizard]

Two ways:

Content

You need to work your content so that people have a reason to comment. These are three ways that have done well for me.

Call To Action / Question

If you end your post with a call to action or a question (Now is the time to do XYZ. Are YOU up for it? etc), people are more likely to comment, especially if it's a topic that they have an opinion on. A good example is writing a post about traffic generation methods, and then asking your readers what they use to drive traffic to their blogs.

Rewards

Everyone likes rewards, and blog readers are no different. All bloggers wouldn't mind a link or two back to their blog(s), and you can encourage them to comment by offering it.

Install a) Comment Luv (shows commenters last post) and b) Top Commentators widget (shows top commenters in your sidebar) - this will help. If you wanted to go further, you could show some link love to your top commenters in an end of month post.

Hot topic

Picking a hot or controversial topic is guaranteed comments if you have traffic. Bashing John Chow / Entrecard helps.

Another way, I've found to get people to reply to what I have written is to outright ask them questions.

Questions like:

Has this ever happened to you?
Have you ever used this resource/application/program/object/whatever?
What do you think about this?

Hope that helps!

Cheers,

-Wiz!

[draggar]

Good (and simple!) pointers, thank you.

[DDC_Cyn]

Asking for a specific reply (call to action) is the best way to get a response, especially if you're making a "list". ex. Top 5 Action Movies, then ask people to list their favorite.

I added Comment Luv to one of my blogs, I don't know that it ups the comments I get, but I enjoy seeing the post titles.

[blackwizard]

Glad you guys liked my post!

Cheers,

-Wiz!

[harleyx]

make it easy, don't force registration or excessive form filling out

get targeted traffic

[blackwizard]

Wouldn't that increase the Spam You could get?

[harleyx]

If you don't take proper precautions, sure - it can. However, there is some very excellent spam detection algorithm software that is free and very easy to plug in to most comment systems. Many popular CMS scripts like Wordpress already come with anti-spam measures right out of the box.

Check out AKISMET. They're top notch.

[blackwizard]

I've already been using ASKIMET, and having no problems with them.

[Orpheus]

Sometimes you need to prime the pump with some initial "favor comments"... meaning have some friends leave a few comments first. Often, people are leery about commenting on a new blog.

[bhartzer]

Try removing nofollow from the comments...and getting your site/blog listed on some of the dofollow lists.