How do you draw stalkers to comment?

I have recently began a blog. The good part is that it has a pretty decent traffic (for a start up blog anyway) and quite a lot of it comes from returning visitors. The bad part is that nobody comments. I know that I have some frequent readers, because Google Analytics shows a lot of direct connections (no referral), I see about 7-8 connections daily coming from the same locations and the ratio of new vs returning is at about 75% to 25%.

What should I do to attract more response from these readers, without alienating them?

Best regards, George

 

Leav eopen ended statements
Ask questions in your post
Add a poll

 

ask your friend to make a comment as a start, usually when your readers see the first comment, they will follow do the same thing ...

 

Thanks for the tips. Green given

Regards, George

 

I already did that, without much success. About 70% of the comments made are done in a comment exchange scheme.

Regards, George

 

I recently wrote a pretty extensive article on this topic. Some of the most important things I have found that you should do to increase the number of comments and commentators is to make it as easy as possible to comment (don't require registration of any kind), always reply to the comments yourself, and giving people some incentive to comment (think top commentators list, posts highlighting useful comments etc).

If you're interested, you can read the full article here:

bloggst.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134

I can't post links yet, so I guess you'll have to copy and paste that

 

Thank you mate... A LOT. I already followed some of the advice (no subscription required to post comments, top commenters list), but this is the most detailed article I could find on this topic. This deserves more than green. Please PM your blog address and I will write a post about it.

Oh and this is the proper link: http://bloggst.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134

Thank you again.

Regards, George

 

First consider that no matter what, at least 90% of web users will NEVER comment, even if you paid them. That said, there's quite a few things you can do to get comments from the other 10%:

1) Create a top-commenters list using one of the top commenters plugins. This will incent those who want backlinks to comment.
2) Ask questions or leave things open-ended (as stated earlier)
3) Create some controversy, or be purposefully incorrect in your post (so people feel a need to correct you)
4) Turn off nofollow on comments and let people know you have done so (there's a plugin for this). Like #1, this will help bring in more SEO minded folks.
5) Respond to all comments in the comments. People may not want to talk to you if you don't talk back.

Hope this helps!
Anita

 

Thank you Anita. BTW, you have a really nice blog that I stalk every once in a while , the toilet humor is my favorite section.

Regards, George

 

I am having the same problem with a forum that I just started. I have aound 15K uniques a month for a new site but I m hardly getting members to regisiter and post comments.

 

This is what I did to get visitors to speak up and come out of the woodwork.

http://www.briangardner.com/blog/a-fun-experiment-and-opportunity-to-delurk.htm

 

I'm facing that same problem myself
What I do right now is leave lots of comments in other people's related blogs. But not just any comment! Sometimes I even blurt my heart out! Just don't try to be awfully nice all the time, some people really get sick of that.