Randfish of SEOmoz wrote a rather lengthy yet concise and well written post entitled 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic.
All of them is spot on except for one (#6) which I would completely disagree: Launch Without Comments (and Add Them Later).
Closed commenting is worse than opening them and not having comments. Why? Though Rand says “There’s something sad about a blog with 0 comments on every post. It feels dead, empty and unpopular.“, closing the comments section may even make a nasty impression that you won’t want people to comment at all. How would you expect your readership to grow then?
I’ve seen blogs with a few dozen pageviews per post but have quite a number of comments. I believe that when you’re just starting, it’s good to nurture (read: interact) every single reader you have and allow them to post comments outright.
Closing comments is just not the way to do it.
Read Rand’s the full entry here.
Har har, I rarely get comments on my personal blog, but it doesn’t matter. I’m happy enough just being able to prattle away, and I know that “0 comments” doesn’t necessarily mean no one’s reading what I write.