Everyone wants more blog comments – enough never seems to be enough. As a blogger, you can get addicted to how much feedback you’re generating. Be careful that you’re not posting just to be controversial, instead of focusing on the value of your post itself.

Having said that, with a few exceptions, posts that inspire comments from your audience can become part of what makes your blog more popular, and can keep it that way if the comments keep coming. Right or wrong, blog comments are seen as an indication of how successful your blog is.

1- Make it as easy as possible to comment.

No logging in before commenting, don’t force them to validate their email address, don’t moderate comments, no captchas, and let people know comments aren’t moderated.

Later, you can re-enable any of these to stem the flow of either real comments, spam or both.

2- Find out what people want to know on your topic and write about that constantly.

If your sites is about pet lovers, and people want to know all about organic dog and cat food, write about it. It might not be your favorite topic, but if it brings you engaging traffic, make it a regular conversation point. Your site is there to serve your population.

3- Stay on topic.

Even if you have a themed day that’s a little outside your topic area (like our Tool Time Fridays with Morgan Lighter) make sure all those posts can still relate back to your central subject.

For example, the other day, Morgan wrote about a tool that can turn YouTube videos into a format compatible with iTunes. Put that together with some of my tips on how to get traffic with web video and you have a whole new use for recordings you uploaded to YouTube and other sites.

4- Post regularly to become part of your reader’s daily habits.

People are habitual creatures. They’ll most likely find your site and include it in their new habits through doing one of their old habits.

Today, someone got up, brushed their teeth, got ready for work, went to their office, read their email, then the news or their RSS feeds (or both.) If they found your site through some other blog’s feed they read, and decided to add you, whenever you have a new entry, they’ll at least read the headline.

That opportunity only comes up each time you publish. After that first six weeks, it’s not as important that you’re doing so daily. But you should be putting up posts in a predictable fashion IF you want regular commenters. Whether it’s approximately every 24 hours, or every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:21 pm isn’t as important as making it a regular occurrence.

5- Leave an open-ended question or query at the end of each post.

If you look at Chris Pirillo’s blogs over at Lockergnome, instead of “Leave a Reply” above the comment form, it often says something like “What do you think?” Sometimes I change mine to “What Are Your Thoughts?”

In addition, when you create a post, the last sentence of your post can be a question to your audience that allows them to continue the conversation. If all other barriers are removed from commenting, sometimes the issue is that you’ve done such a good job writing the article that there’s nothing else to add.

Remember the last date you had? Chances are you asked the other person questions that would have to go beyond yes or no, in order to get them to open up to you. Most of us do it subconsciously. The people who are Really good with people already have questions in mind. We ask things like where they live, what they do, if they enjoy their jobs, etc., and the conversation continues.

Leaving your post open to input stimulates conversation online in the same way.

6- Give incentives for responding.

When people leave me comments, one of the first things I do is visit their site. If it’s an okay site and not spam, I make a point of telling at least one other person about it, usually someone on the staff or a friend, or I’ll comment on the site to let them know I’ve been there. They visited my site and left a comment, and I’d at least like to reciprocate.

If it’s good, I’ll find a recent blog post to add to del.icio.us, post the link on Facebook, or otherwise share via Social Media. If it’s great, I’ll write a blog post about them and send them a trackback, or submit it to more than one Social Media site, usually one with more traffic like Stumble Upon or Digg. I’m also a DoFollow blogger.

If you make a habit of reciprocating, you’ll be cementing the relationship. Not all of them will flourish and bloom into long-term partnerships or even friendships. But the ones that do are worth hundreds of the ones that don’t.

7- Interact with people in conversational communities.

I mentioned Facebook earlier. It can be a major source of traffic for you in dozens of different ways, and it’s not the only site that will send you daily traffic. This is one of the bigger secrets to interactive communities.

You want to find sites where conversations are already taking place. That’s it. Whether it’s Google Groups, Facebook, other forum sites, your own forums, sites like StumbleUpon, or Q and A communities, you want to go where people are already talking about the topic you specialize in, or a topic you want to know about that is related to your market.

It is much easier to jump into hundreds of discussions taking place and help advance one, than to attempt to start hundreds of conversations on your own.

Bonus hit: start the conversations with a pre-planned group of fellow bloggers, family or friends the first few weeks. Even if you’re writing for the same blog, when people see that comments are being made, they’ll follow with more comments. After a week or so, you won’t need to plan at all.

8- Engage the blogosphere.

Obviously other blogs have the conversational communities you want to join. Don’t just comment once and leave, comment weekly, even daily. Engage. Track the comments you leave to see who is responsive and start relationships with those people. Link to another blog from a blog post. Send a trackback. Share the posts you find.

Every month or so, make a point to discover new blogs.

9 – Respond to all your comments. Make an effort to do so as quickly and predictably as possible.

Realistically, we can’t be at our computers twenty four hours a day just waiting for someone to post so we can answer right away. It’s just not happening. Some times I write my posts days in advance so following my comment feed doesn’t help me– I might not remember what post you’re talking about?

So instead, I check in every day and answer comments, approximately every 24 hours, all at once. Of course, I’m also not actively attempting to generate more blog comments. Now they just happen as a result of the momentum we started years ago. To help kick start your own momentum, answer each and every comment.

You should even acknowledge the generic comments (as long as they aren’t spam). One of the reasons is that people often look at the number of comments on a post to decide which one to read. The logic (erred as it may be) is that the post where all the action is has to be the best post on the site.

10 – Install plugins that highlight comments and those who make them, on your blog.

Especially if you have WordPress, there are plugins you can use to feature conversations in your sidebars, and even link to the people who are making the most comments. If your site isn’t busy, don’t worry, most of them can be easily configured to accommodate different activity levels.

Being a blogger, professional or otherwise, is no walk in the park. There’s work involved, and someone has to do it. If that someone is you, avoid being overwhelmed by arming yourself with knowledge, forming a plan, and then working it to reach your goals. And remember, blog comments aren’t necessarily a measure of how well your blog is doing. But a responsive community can help indicate whether you’re on the right track.