Most bloggers would prefer to have more comments on their blog and there is generally an agreement that blogs benefit from comments. That is because not only many comments indicate that your blog is popular, but also make your visitors more involved with your blog. Various visitors often contribute interesting thoughts of their own, which in turn makes them more loyal readers and in general improves the overall quality of your blog. Improving the quality of your blog in turn attracts more visitors. So the question is not whether you should encourage comments, but rather how to do it. This post is going to give advice on this subject. Before we start, if you are a WordPress Blogger, just make sure you have Akismet plug-in activated to fight with spam. Without further adieu, here is the list:
1. Have a top commentators widget on your sidebar. This greatly motivates people to leave comments, as they will feel appreciated for the fact of contributing to the discussion. I am using the Show Top Commentators widget which is compatible with the latest WordPress release and can be found here: www.pfadvice.com/wordpress-plugins/show-top-commentators.
2. Reward your top commentators with a short review of their sites or even some money. Some bloggers have done this and it served them well as it encouraged leaving comments on their blogs.
3. Have a recent comments widget on your sidebar. This encourages visitors to leave comments, especially on older posts, because new comments are very easy to find. I am using the default Recent Comments widget from WordPress. Blogs hosted on Blogger.com may use Recent Comments for Blogger found on storago.com/free_tools.