On a mailing list I'm on, someone pointed out the difficulty of starting a blog because he didn't know the audience he would be writing for. That got me thinking about getting started blogging, and I realized two "rules" I have for megnut.com. I thought I'd share them here as well:
1. I write about things I feel passionate about
This ensures that I'll take the time to get facts right, that (hopefully) the excitement will show through the writing and make the posts engaging to readers, and I always have topics to write about because I have lots of passions. It doesn't ensure lots of readers (a la Glenn Reynolds) but that's OK, because I'm not interested in mass audience. I'm interested in someone who'll email me with the story of their first marathon, or with a pointer to a great recipe they enjoyed. It ensures I connect with readers who share my passions, and those are people I want to meet.
2. I won't write something I wouldn't want my parents/grandparents to read
This doesn't mean I won't write about some annoying XHTML compliance issue, it just means I'll do it in a way that might make it comprehensible to them if they choose to read it. I've heard through the family grapevine though they, "just skip those posts." More importantly, it means I don't write about something I wouldn't tell them in person, and in a way I'd tell it in person. So I rarely swear. And I don't talk about intimate issues. And I try very hard not to whine or complain, because my Yankee family has very little tolerance for that.
I don't know if those two rules are useful for anyone else, but in looking back over 5+ years of blogging, those seem to be two constants I can identify.