Habits of Effective Bloggers

I've writing for the last couple of weeks of this theme of blogging in our Free eZine, which you can sign up by the way by clicking on the side bar of this blog. This is a little project I'm working with Darren Rowse in ProBlogger. Since it is so hard to say what is effective and not for everyone a few people are going to share their ideas of what effective blogging mean for them according to their own experiences. I'm sure we'll learn about what others are doing and spark some ideas of our own depending of what it is we want to achieve with our blogs.

So here is my list of habits:

1) Know what you want to achieve with your blog before you start one. You might want to promote a service or product but we should not forget that blogging is about building relationships to those that relate to our blog topic. If you gear your blog solely in advertising and selling people are quickly going to go somewhere else.
2) Make sure you write on your blog frequently (every other day is ideal)
3) Be yourself, let your readers get to know the real you.
4) Give your readers a reason to come back. Provide up-to-date information.
5) Be on the lookout for topics related to your blog on the news and on other blogs and share them with your readers via links interjected among your own opinions.
6) Check your post for comments and answer them in order to communicate and build a relationship and trust.
7) Have fun, don't let your blog drag you down. I guess that's the reason why we should consider #1 carefully before you launch your own blog.