Blog comments mean something these days. They show your readers that your blog is a happening place with plenty of action. In fact, blog comments spread like a virus. However, just like a virus… you need no have some to start with before they will spread. That being said, hopefully this guide will help you go down the right path towards success with your blog.

Now your first step is to get your starter comments so that your readers will start to contribute thier own comments. There is an easy way to accomplish this… and that is to seed your blog with your own comments. Is it immoral? Probably not. Does it work? yes it does in fact.

People are attracted towards a good conversation. If you are at a party and you are quiet, not many people will come talk to you. However, if you are chatting up with several people… other people will flock to you.

So you need to give your blog a push in the right direction by seeding your comments first. Once you create some conversation, others will follow. Now you must be logged out from your blog in order to do this. This way you can create your comments with a distinct name and email address. The email address can be anything random address or your own email address. That doesn’t matter because nobody will be able see the email address anyways. However, you must space out your comments over a period of time instead of doing them all at once. This way they will look more official. In addition, you can reply to these comments as administrator to give the look that you are part of the conversation.

Your second step is to install a wordpress plugin called Top Commentators Widget. Youcan see several successful blogs with this plugin installed. One such blog belongs to John Chow. His readers with the most comments will be featured in this sidebar widget with a “do follow” link to thier own webpage. This added benefit will attract your visitors to go ton thier blog. However, you need to remember to set the widget links to open in a new window so that the readers do not leave your page.

finally, you should run a contest to promote more comments. Tell your users that they get a ballot for each comment that they do. You can do a random draw from these ballots and award the prize to a lucky commentator.

Now you don’t have to give away a prize that costs anything. You can create a special ebook with usefull information that your readers cant resist. Everyone needs information and free information is even better. I happen to like free quite a bit.

This should get your blog off to a good start. However, if your content isn’t good you will not get any new comments… no matter how many seeded comments you do.