Across the range of blogs I own I'm beginning to see some traffic at last but am not receiving many comments. What is the best way to encourage this.. are there some strategies to follow, or plugins that can help, or is it all just about having great content that visitors would naturally comment on anyway?
Naturally its going to be down to the content you post and getting traffic that would be interested in what you have to say. If anyone does comment, make sure to involve them into a conversation within the comments - this can drum up a good count.
As cormac said, you need to engage readers that do comment. If you have a decent number of readers, well placed comments that are "fake" have been said to work well, although results are anecdotal. I've never done it myself, however, you may wish to research this as a discussion sparking tool.
There's no easy way to meaningful comments ... you need good, thought provoking or informative posts on a good looking professional blog (PR doesn't harm), then people will feel the need to comment and other bloggers may see a benefit from comment links.
If you're having a fairly good readership, Keep a room for readers to have their opinion on a prticular topic, ask questions etc. This stimulates your readers to be involved more deeply.
Ask questions. Make sure you have lots of regular RSS readers as they are the ones who comment. Add favicons to the comments so they stand out.
Thanks for the advice guys. Mad4, I've installed the favatars plugin on one of the blogs to see what effect, if any, that has - sounds interesting.
At the end of your post engage the reader, talk to them directly i.e. How important do you think comments are for a blog? What efforts do you go to, to encourage visitor interaction? If I put that at the end of a post chances are I'll get a reply, I don't get hundreds but it normally results in a response.
Always ask a question from your readers in the end of the post. Also removing nofollow tag in comment space will help, but also it will attract some unwanted spam.
I tell them they can post a link (one per comment, and it must be a direct link to a site, not a redirect, or they could set up something innocent looking and then later change it to point to viagra or whatever :-( I also tell them I will not use any email addresses they give to register for commenting Gal
I just started using the free plugin Click Comment from www.postreach.com. Most people don't like posting their email, etc so don't comment. Click Comment allows them to click an icon to "comment" on your post.