Matt Haughey (of Metafilter fame) on the tendency of online content to take the form of lists and how-to's for easy scanning and ingestion:

Seriously, the top of digg, delicious, reddit, and every other link aggregator seems to be clogged with Lists of Vital Things You Should Know. After seeing dozens of them fly by every single day, I'm starting to think it's just lazy headline writing that gets promoted up thanks to our nanosecond attention-span RSS readin' latte drinkin' ruby on rails codin' getting things done task managin' nerd culture. Cool it with the lists. Feel free to use real paragraphs and explain stuff. I have time.

Life Beyond Code has a great run-down of the first things to do upon commencing blogging:

Many of my close friends are entering the blogging world. I am so happy for them. I started blogging in Feb 2005 and I have learnt that we need to do a few basic things (for starters) and I have put together a starter checklist for new bloggers. I have used this list to help my friends and now I thought I will make this public. This list is by no means complete and all the items may not be relevant to everyone.

1. Register a domain name with your name and redirect to your blog.

Read the full list...

My girlfriends at MarketingSherpa have a case study on Ice.com's blogs.

Good news:

Sparkle Like The Stars is currently getting between 10,000 and 15,000 unique monthly visitors, 31% of whom click through to the main Ice.com site. The conversion rate on clickthroughs is about 1%, which Gniwisch says is "higher than many affiliates but lower than search marketing which converts at 2%."

Difficulties:

Keeping the blogs updated using his own time and help from in-house staff was tough after the bloom wore off. One of his favorite independent bloggers agreed to take the job -- posting two-three times per week in exchange for a flat per-posting fee. This effort again had mixed results -- the blogger in question wasn't a professional freelancer (those folks cost much more) and wasn't as consistent as a professional writer might be.

Currently:

As of this date, two of the blogs have not been updated in almost a month and one of them has replaced original content with a feed of previously published posts from the other two blogs. It's late summer and not peak time for Ice.com, so we suspect the situation may change closer to the holiday season.

Other difficulties:

Gniwisch also noticed that it was a bit harder to get significant traffic and hotlinks to his blogs, without a paid ad campaign, than he had anticipated.

Full report from the faboo folks at MarketingSherpa.

J writes:

Do you ever find that something you wrote in your ranty personal blog has negative impact on your professional career?

This is a tough one and I'd have to say no - so far. The day my dad discovered my blog - ah, good times. I'd been personal-blogging for I think about 2 years and was single then and was of course living it up as any single guy would - granted not of any Paris 'Skank of the Bank' Hilton magnitude, but a bit more rambunctious than my upbringing.

Few things excite bloggers more than talking about blogging. It's a trend I see a lot. Blogs about blogging. Seminars about giving seminars. Public speakers talking about public speaking. Podcasts about podcasting. Coaches coaching coaches. Newsletters about newsletters... anyway - the quickest way to hit a nerve with bloggers is to get a little iconoclastic. Ann over at Marketing Profs does just that with her post What's The Biggest Lie About Blogging.

A roster of folks chime in and here's a few of my favorites:

Sensei Seth: Oh for sure, it's this: That people care what you say. They don't. They care what they get.

BL: I've read a zillion times that if you have great stuff to say people will find you. But you're a needle in a haystack until you know how to promote. All the top bloggers are skilled and artful self-promoters.

Jeremy: You have to be an A-List blogger or there's no point.

And my additions:

1. It's hard to get started.
2. It's 'one more thing' to think about. (If you are any sort of professional keeping tabs on an industry should never run out of things to blog about.)
3. It replaces ezines. Tandem tandem tandem!
4. It has to be perfect out of the gate.
5. Blogs are new. (They are an extension and maturation of existing trends and technologies.)
6. Only the A-List matters.

A big challenge for bloggers of all experience levels is what the hell to blog out. Here's some ideas:

1. The biggest fear around your business or industry. Vulnerability scares the hell out of anybody - but is one of the fastest ways to build rapport. My post about bookfat still gets me emails.

2. The top news story - filtered through your topic. If your an IT firm, talk about the challenges of deploying networks in disaster areas. If you are in marketing, talk about the marketing genius of Karl Rove.

3. The most popular book in your niche. No-brainer. Go to Amazon, find your category, read the top book in your category, blog your notes, make a mindmap, add an entry to Wikipedia, great a study guide, refute, rebutt, advance, expand, expound.

4. The big elephant in the room. Every industry has one. What isn't being talked about among your colleauges? What's the controversial topic? What is pissing people off?

5. A smart blog post from your colleague. Always feature other people on your blog, colleagues, clients, competitors...

BONUS: What you ate for lunch. Whenever I talk about blogging it always comes up, 'Who wants to read about what someone had for lunch?' That's beside the point. Blog about what you learned from your lunch outing that reflect on your industry or niche. Or have lunch with someone fun/smart/crazy.

But when in doubt write something - anything - you can always save it as Draft, unPublish it, revise it, ask for help, etc. Blogging is about completion, not perfection.