2) Engineer it such that the experience of commenting fills a need for people. People use comments to be validated, to mark out tribes, to cast other people out of tribes, to get questions answered, to form relationships, to blow off steam, to demonstrate expertise, etc etc. Figure out what motivates the users, then figure out how giving them what they want advances your interests.
3) Consider carefully whether getting twice as many blog comments as you do currently would improve your life in any way.
I work for a publishing company, however, and I've found that the single biggest impact on comments, site traffic excluded, is the features your comments system offers.
Of our eight websites, the site with the best rate of comments is also the one with the most sophisticated comments system. Taking last week's statistics as an example, it averaged one comment for every 30 page views, which is one comment for every five site visits. It actually saw slightly more comments than unique visitors. That's a pretty impressive achievement in my eyes, and while not the whole story, it is thanks largely to the way commenting works.
The comments system on that site is a custom solution, created with AJAX/PHP, which dynamicly loads comments on page load. Among the best features are:
- unread comments highlighted a specific colour (on our site, based on user accounts, could be based on IPs easily)
- article lists / home page / etc shows comment numbers next to article links, including number of unread comments for the specific user viewing it
- a panel showing the ten items most recently commented on
- users can reply to a specific comment, this notifies the user they reply to
On this site, the key goals of the comments system are to inrease user experience for regular visitors to the site, and to drive traffic, however for smaller sites such as personal blogs, it could also help in other ways. I for one never comment on personal blogs because I know I'll forget to check for replies - why not allow email subscription for less-frequent readers, or specific notification of a reply directly to a comment a user left?
That's my biggest tip then: think in terms of "how can I make the commenting system more efficient, usably and enjoyable for my users?" - but of course, there are many other considerations, such as writing content that is more likely to inspire user discussion and feedback.
Another blog post, about messing around with an Ikea train set (http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/more-fun-with-toys-ikea-lill...) received 26 comments and has 56,373 pages views. So one comment per 2,200 page views.
One last example about squaring numbers in your head (http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/03/squaring-two-digit-numbers-i...) has 15 comments and 21,380 page views. One comment every 1,400 page views.
So, more traffic helps. What's the URL of your blog?
2) I feel bad for the guy not having any comments and try to help him out.
Unfortunately there's a paradox online where people link from sites like HN then come back to the community they trust to comment. Once you have enough people reading your blog that feel passionate about it (not just browse + leave), start adding some calls to action at the bottom. Encourage people to share their own stories and be very specific.
Examples (based on your username): 1) "Have you been food poisoned by croutons? Tell us about it in the comments!"
2) "Do you have a favorite salad dressing? Let us know!"
The first part should always be a question that probes for a personal story. Everyone has their own opinion/story about something, you want to draw it out of them! The second part should be a very positive 'we want to hear from you' type vibe and always include a link to the comments.
Here's a (shameless plug) example from my blog: http://getmochi.com/blog/fighting-the-gulf-oil-spill-one-hai...
"Do you work with a charity in your salon? Leave a comment with your best “feel good” story!"
Obviously this is targeted at salon owners and not HN readers. My first sentence draws them in with a 'does this apply to you?' The second sentence encourages a comment and gives a solid idea of WHAT to comment about. This is super important because people need to be told what to do, especially when commenting. Very few people will respond to a 'leave us a comment' post.
1. People who want something from the author (notice, funding, what have you).
2. People who think the blogger is an idiot and feel the need to argue with them.
3. Personal friends of the blogger.
There are People who actually want to discuss the issue but they tend to gravitate towards communities where they know they'll get intelligent debate (like HN).
So unless you're a celebrity and big enough to have a whole community established around your blog you should really feel grateful for no comments. It means people don't think you're an idiot and that you're smart enough to not interact with your friends through a blog.
Aside from content and traffic, it's important to lower the barrier for people that may want to comment. I'm not sure what you're using now, but nobody wants to make an account, and people generally like being e-mailed if someone replies to them. DISQUS is a very easy win there. The list goes on, but I don't want to turn this into an informercial.
Still a nice service for some, though :)
For what it's worth we do have an API to access/export your comments if you ever want to leave. I used DISQUS personally before I joined the company because I didn't want to implement login/avatars/sharing/notifications for what amounts to a pretty small blog, but ymmv.
I don't think that means that people like to make a new login for each site, I think it means that there is more to creating a contributing community on your blog than lowering the barrier to entry.
But there have been plenty of times when I've wanted to contribute something but couldn't be bothered because I'd have to return to site for the next few days to check for replies. While I may do that on HN (like right now) I won't normally do that for Joe Random Blog.
My wife's blog gets about 10+ comments per post with only 100-300 uniques per day. Sometimes a traffic spike will bring in a bunch of extra hits, but the amount of comments left after the spike depends on who was coming in. If it was a bunch of web developers or something: zero comments, even over thousands of hits.
A minor conclusion I draw from this is that blog comments come from community people, visitors and fans who keep coming back.
The "jadedness" of the community is a far bigger factor though. Some people are on a quest to consume, and not necessarily to participate.
I think that is the reason that tech crunch and MSNBC get no valuable comments, and blogs like the one above get great comments.
The service is 100% confidential and provides intelligent comments that add value and insight to your blog post.
ProComments also provides comments for YouTube videos and Facebook pages.
Out of interest, do you just offer to post the first comment, or could someone for example ask for 100 comments on a single youtube video, making it look like lots of users commenting on it?
Do you have any stats to back this up? Unless the responses you're providing actually contribute to the conversation in a meaningful way, I really don't see how just "getting the ball rolling" does any good.