Just recently, I found two very useful plugins for wordpress blogs; they are absolute must-haves in order to stay engaged with your readers:
- ReplyMe
- CommentLuv

1) ReplyMe -it took me a while to find this one and ever since I’ve installed it, my readers and I love it. What it does: whenever someone comments on your blog and you as the admin respond, the commenter will be notified. That way, the commenter will not have to go back to your blog and check if you responded. Pretty cool plugin!
I have seen something similar before where you can tick whether you want to be notified if someone else commented on that post or not but then you will get ALL comments from that thread. With the ReplyMe plugin you will just get the response and that’s it.

2) CommentLuv This plugin automatically places a link to the commenter’s last blog post at the end of their comment. This way, you reward your readers with another option to link back to their blogs and have other visitors have an easy way to check out their blogs.

I know these work well with wordpress blogs. CommentLuv also works with other providers, you can check at commentluv.com.