I guess we can still call them the tubes, even in Uncle Ted’s about to go up the river. Anyway, one thing I’ve noticed about blogging is that they have (sometimes) comments.

In a lot of ways, the Internet is like Christmas. It’s better to give than receive. Comments are like that too. To get any, you’ve got to give them too.

You see, when you comment somewhere, your commentee starts wondering if you’re an axe murderer or a serial killer or something and so they go to your site to find out more about you. (Hint: it’s better if you don’t have a list of your convictions or something kinky in the About page. Well,  if you do, you’ll get a different class of reader. Remember, on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a poodle. 

Once they figure out you’re not really a spammer, they tend to return the comment favor, so to speak. However, if you’re boring as hell (or, sadly, if you post something really long (* stops to count words and cries) you will have other problems. Sad but true. People read shorter posts on the Internet.

And speaking of boring as hell, if you’ve been sweating bullets to write about something or other topic and time and time again nobody comments on your posts, they’ve all been visiting, but the no comments thing is a hint. Write about something else. If it ain’t working, fix it.

Learn to spell, or spellcheck. (Learn to grammar, too.)

It seems if you have one of those Captcha gadgets, that can reduce the number of comments you get. Your mileage may vary on that (and the downfall of no captcha isspam). You can either trust the world (which will end badly, trust me) or use something like Akismet in WordPress. Now, I like the captchas because I have fun making up definitions for the words they display, but that’s just me.

You will also have to check out your spam filter to see if it caught things it shouldn’t, which is possible. I’ve caught two comments that Akismet thought were spam recently.

Other ways to get comments are pretty straight-forward. If someone posts a comment, ask them a question about it or follow up on their post. People love themselves and want you to love them too. If you ask them something (OK, “Have you always been an asshat?” doesn’t count.) back, they may respond. You start a discussion. You should be the #1 commenter on your site. (Don’t be the only one, though. That’s scary as well as pathetic.)

Keep in mind that as much as your commenters are also stalkers who are after you love and respect you, for them it’s also all about them and they want to see what’s in it for them. You simply need to write things that are not only about you but also reflect upon the human condition – or show kittehs. Kittehs work too. Or Puppehs.

There are gadgets out there on the tubes (like DISQUS) that spread the comment love. Check them out. You can add in plug-ins that allow people to subscribe to the comments. That gets them back, especially if you start a flame war. Flame wars can start historic comment levels.

And speaking of comment love, use that too. If Newscoma posts something that’s totally killer, it never hurts to tell her and the rest of the tubes.

Oddly enough, and as I have already mentioned, other people seem to do things other than visit your site (I know – what are they thinking?) So just in case they don’t actually have time to make a full comment, if you add buttons for Digg, Delicious, StumbledUpon, and other social networking sites.