Write an anchor post every month or two. # An anchor post is a tutorial-style piece that teaches your readers how to do something, like How to Pick Fruit at its Peak of Flavor or Top 10 Ways to Prevent Identity Theft. It can be the length of a short magazine article, perhaps 750 to 1,500 words. This type of content is evergreen--it won't become obsolete, and you can continually refer back to it in your subsequent posts. Every month or two, add another anchor post.

Write at least one new post a day. #Frequent posting keeps your audience interested and jogs your creativity. The more you post, the more you'll be picked up by the search engines, and the more new people will find your blog, become regular readers and buy your book. The first two sentences are the hardest of a post, and it's all downhill after that.

Comment on other blogs in your niche. #This will attract fellow bloggers and their readers who follow the link in your comment back to your blog. Make a meaningful comment that advances the discussion, don't just say "I agree."

Link to other blogs from within your blog posts. #With certain blogging software, this is known as a trackback, and leaves a summary of your blog post on the original blog. Result: More bloggers and readers find you.

Ask for comments on your blog.# End your posts with a question, prompting your readers for feedback. When practical, end your posts with a question like, "What do you think?", or "What's your take on this?" Readers are often more interested in what _they _ have to say than in what _you _ have to say.

Don't write when you're angry.# If you're upset, cool off for a few hours--or a day--before posting something nasty that you might regret later. It's nearly impossible to delete stuff on the Web. You might erase something from your blog, but the text can be archived in dozens of other places.

Link to your old content.# After you've been blogging for a while, you'll have five or six previous blog posts that were most popular with readers--drawing lots of links, traffic and comments. For the benefit of new readers, link to these previous posts when you write about the same topics in the future. Add a small menu of these posts on the sidebar of your blog, with a heading such as #Lively Conversations# or #Greatest Hits#.

Add artwork. # Sprinkling stock photos and illustrations in your blog posts is a simple way to add visual appeal. Images are eyeball magnets. Writing a post about how to fix a flat tire? Include a small stock photo of someone installing a tire. The site #www.sxc.hu# has thousands of royalty-free photos you can search by keyword. You needn't illustrate your posts literally, which can get boring. Let's imagine your post concerns some type of manipulation. It's the key idea and the main word in your post title. How could you illustrate it? Just search for "manipulation" at the photo site mentioned above, and you'll see dozens of images you could use as a smart illustration--like photos of puppets, marionettes or chess pawns. If your first keyword doesn't find results, try a synonym--or if you're feeling ironic, try an antonym.

Create an RSS or Atom feed.# Be sure your blog automatically posts a feed, so readers who use an aggregator like Bloglines can read this way if they wish. You may have to turn this function on yourself, so consult your blogging service's help files.

Optimize your blog. # Make sure your blog "pings" the blog aggregators such as Technorati and Bloglines each time you've posted to your blog. That way your new content will be indexed immediately.

An easy way to automate this is to open a free account at #www.Feedburner.com# and enable its free Pingshot feature.

More blogging fine points:

Write in the first person. Never talk about yourself as a different being.

Write keyword-rich headlines. Give people a reason to start reading.

Hook your audience in the first sentence. Ask a question or pose a challenge.

Don't get too preachy. Blog communication isn't top-down, it's a conversation.

Focus on you, _ we_ and us.

Don't change your blog's domain address; it's easy to lose your audience this way.

Tell the truth.

Read lots of blogs.

Link liberally to other blogs. Your post can include an excerpt from the other blog in quotation marks, but don't include more than a paragraph or two--more than that could get you accused of copyright violation.

Link to your previous posts.

Don't be boring. Break some crockery. A good blog takes sides.

Don't rant on side issues outside your blog's focus. Your audience will tire of this quickly.

Break news.

Be authentic.

Tell stories. Have a conversation.

Vary your sentence length. Frequently.