Comments can be a form of motivation for you when reach low points in your blogging pursuits. Only a few people ever leave a comment, even if they find the comment helpful. You have to be able to attract the people that are willing to spend a minute or two to leave a comment on your blog, encouraging them to do so.

When someone examines the overall “value” of your blog, one factor that may be taken into consideration is the average number of comments on each post. The more you have, the more your are providing to your readers – they are getting more information/have more thoughts/opinion on the topic you have presented. This also means that you have more original content and popularity than others.

In addition to the buyers’ benefits, you will also be able to see a noticeable difference in the quality of your blog as comments per post grows – more people will leave comments, even if they don’t have a blog or are interested in the same topic as you write about.

Not all approaches to getting blog comments work, however these are some general methods to garner more comments on your blog, no matter what type you run.

1. Use a tool that helps you grow blog comments. Some of them add nothing more than information about yourself, such as how many comments the person has posted on your blog to their latest post. These services add value in that they prevent the commenter from becoming “isolated” and alone on the blog. They are able to see what others have commented about, and in some ways, they are rewarded for commented more often.
2. Ask your readers to comment. At the end the post, or sometime between the beginning and end of the post, request that your readers join in the discussion about the topic at hand. Be sure that your readers know that they are important or respected. A common problem among bloggers is that they don’t listen to their readers, so the overall quality of the blog is lower than it should be. Your readers help support you every day, even if it is just by their visit to your blog.
3. Don’t leave any comments behind. When you see a comment posted on your blog, leave a response to it, even if it isn’t too long or provoking. Thank your commenters for contributing to your blog and growing its overall success. If the blog author doesn’t reply to comments, it is a sign that he or she doesn’t even have the time to read what others think of the topic and that the commenters mean nothing.
4. Enforce a comments policy. A comments policy allows your readers to know what is and isn’t acceptable on your blog. Once they read this, they should understand that you value their opinion and thoughts, and that you don’t tolerate spamming. It typically doesn’t make readers question whether they should leave a comment, but sometimes increases in the number of overall comments.
5. Keep it simple. Around the comments area, be sure that there aren’t ads blocking readers’ view of the comments area. This may appear like an obvious element that should be avoided through common sense, but there have been many times in which sites have prevented me from placing content in a text area due to a pop-up or ad that just won’t close. It prevents the readers and potential commenters from leaving a comment on the blog – and they probably will never return. Throughout the lifespan of your blog, this single loss could mean an enormous loss in terms of your success, especially if they previously enjoyed reading your blog. You also don’t want to have an enormous set of “features” or follow-up options for the reader to select or de-select.
6. Factor in the benefit for readers. If readers see no value in leaving a comment, they probably won’t. I don’t believe that people comment on your blog just to get “link juice,” but for the true benefits of writing a comment and possibly getting more traffic to their blog. The traffic will, in itself, lead to more search engine benefits than the PageRank factor, which shouldn’t be considered the “holy grail” of all your goals. An even larger, more important part of leaving comments is the interaction process that you and your readers share.
7. Be the first to blog about something. Readers want to read something first, whether it is breaking news or a topic that hasn’t been written about before, such as a tip or a review of a product. They will likely comment requesting additional details about what you have been writing about. However, when you do this, be sure that you are as accurate and timely as possible.
8. Don’t fear negativity. Negative comments are some of the best comments, as they provide inspiration for other people who may feel the same way about the selected topic. Don’t delete these comments unless they contain profanity or attack another person/race. They also add to the general discussion.
9. Enable comments and trackbacks. Some blogs, even though they are officially called “blogs” don’t even contain a comments area or have the comments area turned off. Just because a post has reached a certain age doesn’t mean that it should be “closed.” Plus, you will be able to get more traffic in the long-term if you enable discussion. Otherwise, you’ll have some emails to read at the end of the day.
10. Leave questions unanswered. If you answer all the questions that you set out to write the post about, readers won’t have anything else to discuss. Let’s say you write about an even that happened in your life – you don’t want to simply conclude the post there. You could, instead, leave the post “open” and continue the post on a later day.
11. Give credit where it is due. Readers that don’t see any link back to a source article, especially where they might know where you have taken content from, especially images or excerpts probably won’t comment, since you are technically stealing the content from the content creator. Following this, readers may leave more comments if they have the source and can continue reading elsewhere.
12. Post irregularly. Most blogs post on weekdays during certain time periods to ensure that the most content gets to the feed reader before other blogs’ posts. However, you could also experiment posting on the weekend to see how much additional traffic or comments you get, as there are already less posts created during this period.
13. Be timeless. Many of the tips that have been presented earlier on this blog overlap. Being timeless means that you write “without expiring” – your content stands the test of time and still has value years from now (not news). Some posts allow readers to continue sharing content even if it hasn’t been posted within the past month. Strive to write content like this for the maximum benefits.
14. Lead on. A common feature that many people overlook is the fact that if a reader likes one post, they will surely like another. While the “related post” feature is utilized sometimes, you could implement it in a way that “presents” this feature only if the reader has left a comment. This will help “lead” he or she onto the next best post, likely to leave additional comments there.
15. Don’t forget people that are frequent contributors. Place a “rewards” area in your sidebar. For example, if a reader has contributed more than five comments, place a link back to their blog in the sidebar. This is a small reward for the time that they have spent on your blog and adding value to what you have written.
16. Forget common rules. Stray from the crowd in how you promote posts. Readers will see this and will find it intriguing to see how you are trying to promote and grow your blog. Don’t worry about people you may be angering, as long as you fully understand that you aren’t breaking any legal rules.
17. Write about something controversial. No matter what you write, there will always be something that people find controversial about it. Therefore, you could always gain a comment or two by using this method, although not as many as if you stuck to this approach in each post.
18. Make mistakes. There will always be someone to pick out small mistakes in your content, whether a fact, spelling or grammar error, or another mistake. While you don’t want to make them consistently, you could add a small mistake that might stand out to gain some extra comments. This will surely add to a small discussion.
19. Punish readers for not commenting. Post a message at the bottom of the post (there might even be a plugin available) that insists on the reader commenting on the post. This is a last-resort attempt at getting extra comments, however.
20. Reflect on your own life or experiences. It doesn’t take a huge, in-depth life story to bring readers to comment on your post. All it takes is a post that has at least one other person in the same situation as you were/are in to create a discussion between you and any other readers that come by your post. Try this post method and see what results happen as a result.

I am sure that there are plenty of other ways to get more comments, but I wanted to scrape the surface on what you could do to improve the number of comments on your blog from zero to hundreds in as short a period of time as possible. {With more traffic comes more comments.}

Conclusion - What other ways could you suggest to readers to gain more traffic (through your own experience)? – an example of a question that you could pose to your readers.