Content is supreme but apart from the content and the amount of information you put in, you need to make it more accessible and consumable. Like they say, Food that Looks and Smells better, Tastes better. It is often too difficult to stay visible and be able to communicate your thoughts and ideas safely and clearly. For a more intimate relationship with your friends and the online community, in general, you should use a blog. It is a convenient way to make your ideas and opinions known or to publish more formal articles on specific topics, and to develop commentaries around them.
However creatively you design your blog the main point of blogging and its essence lies in the content it holds. A blog’s design should allow your user to focus on it and make sure not to divert his attention. Place links to most popular articles or recent entries where readers would first see when they visit your blog. If you are a beginner you should concentrate on the content, but the next step is always the presentation.
The most important feature of all: post regularly and post often. It not only brings readers back regularly but it means the spiders from the search engines will return more frequently indexing your entire site, and you’ll start getting hits from the search engines.
Pinging to weblogs et al is good but trackbacking to sites is better, when of course your post is in relation to that sites topic. Also legitimate commenting directly on other sites helps expose your site to others. But remember, it must be legitimate comment and not spam!