How to get more blog comments?

I do okay with getting blog comments. I'd like to do better. That's what this thread is for.

It's not easy to consistently get people to interact on blogs. I'm curious about some of your ideas on how to encourage more action on blogs.

I'll start off by telling what I've been doing and noticing. Any additional tips would be appreciated by myself and those wanting to get more interaction their blogs.

1. By far, it helps to blog often and keep it consistent. I've noticed that if I blog for a few days in a row, people keep coming back. If I wait a week or two, I've lost all momentum. It''s not easy to have the discipline to blog everyday.

Today I started putting blogs in the cue. I have 3 set up for the next few days and will try to stay ahead so I have a post each day. When I'm randomly surfing the internet, it's helpful when I get a idea to put it into a text file and put it in a folder called "Blog Ideas". Some of these ideas need to be blogged about right away, while others aren't time sensitive and can be used for fodder later.

2. Responding to the people who take the time to comment really helps out alot. When I do this, people tend to come back and see what I said. It's also polite since they took the time to give you their thoughts. I think it also encourages other to post because they may want to have a dialogue with you or have their feelings validated as well. (I don't validate all people. In fact, I've been known to slam a few at times. I call them sacrificial lambs.)

3. Learn to write well and write stories. I'll admit I'm pretty lazy, but every time I read John Carlton's blog John Carlton's Official Blog - The Marketing Rebel RANT I always say to myself... "Geez, I gotta write blog posts like that". He's really damn good at telling stories.

4. Use pictures and videos. The old saying "a picture is worth a thousand words" is nearly true. I'd say it's more like 300 words when blogging. The cool thing about pics are that maybe you are lazy one day, but you can still snap a photo on your iphone and upload it from your phone to your blog. Baam, blog post done and you got a silly drunk clown riding a big whee on your blog.

5. Make the layout and design easy to read. I used to have a dark blue background with white text. It was horrible to read. I'm so thankful Travis made me a new blog with black text on a white background. Way easier to read.

Also, it helps to space out your paragraphs. Paragraphs with more than 3 or 4 sentences tend to make it hard to read.

6. Let your list know about your blog posts and ask them to participate. If they signed up for your list, they are probably interested in your stuff.

7. Don't always sell. Have fun. Share personal and intimate stuff.

Okay, I'm just kind of rambling.

Any other thoughts on how to get more blog comments. I know those images that say... "Tweet This" or "Share On Facebook are probably pretty valuable too. Kern was telling me that much of his blog traffic was coming from people retweeting some of his posts.

Any more stuff?