It has been hard for me to get the users to post some comments. I take a lot of time to write the posts, optimize the page, market it, bookmark it at a lot of places, even marketed it at work. But it has been very hard for me to get users to comment. I would like the participation of the users. I had once recieved a bunch of comments on one of my posts regarding a personal experience on First class flight travel from Dallas to Syracuse. But I think that one with about 7 or 8 comments is the one which has most comments. I would like to know how some blogs have like hundreds of comments and what is it that makes a user leave a comment? I don't want to hire people to post comments etc. I would like to know any ideas to keep users/visitors feel involved with the site. Appreciate your help! Thanks, http://www.explainstuff.com
Lots of comments stem from: -lots of traffic -lots of repeat traffic with people familiar with your site and maybe even the other people leaving comments -lots of great content that is comment worthy Work on building all of that. You can also try using contests of some kind to build comment counts.
If you have repeated visitors who know you better, they will leave their comments. Need time to build good relationship with your blog visitors.
Take a look at these threads in the forum. Which ones have the most replies? It's obviously either, controversial topics, highly popular topics, just anything that triggers someone to say something. Use the same concepts when writing your post, as long as marketing properly, like you are already doing.