A colleague asked me this morning about blogging. Here is some basic info.

1. How does this tie to my website? Is it a separate domain or just a page on my site? You can add blogging software like Wordpress to your website as a sub-domain (blog.domain.com) or use a folder (domain.com/blog) to re-direct to an external blog like wordpress.org or blogger.
2. How often do I need to blog? At least twice a week to get readers and noticed by search engine spiders.
3. What do I blog about? Is it topic related? Pick 5 keywords that you want to be an expert in and blog about them (and only them).
4. Do I need a special name for my blog? You can because headlines are important, but the coloring and logo should be similar to your website.
5. How much time do I allocate weekly to do this?  A researched thought piece can take between 2-4 hours (like this post). I can write faster, shorter pieces that take about an hour.
6. Do I need to link it to LinkedIn (or other social network)? You don't have to link anything. But you can use the LinkedIn status window to let people know when a new blog post was published.
7. I don't have a Twitter account - do I need one? No. You don't need twitter unless you want more distractions and noise - and one more way for people to find you.
8. How much time to I need to allow to set this up? You can set up blogger or wordpress.org in about an hour. It could take a day to add Wordpress to your domain.
9. How do I know if people are following me? You can have people read the blog via feedburner (now owned by Google). That means they sign up to get each post as an email. People can read it via RSS in a reader or in something like Google Wave. You can add Google Analytics or a counter to see how many people hit your blog, but does the number really matter? As long as I get the occasional comment and email, I'm happy. For me, blogging is an outlet and a way to talk about the Industry. It's also an excellent source of leads and SEO on keywords I blog about.
10. Will it cost me anything? Wordpress software is free. Having a Ninja set it up (like CR8 Marketing) will cost you a little money. The real cost is in time. Weekly time to write the content.
11. Are there any risks? Yes, not blogging means that you are irrelevant :) Joking. But content is king, so how will people find you if you don't create content? You can be the most promiscuous networker with thousands of contacts across the social netscape, but does anyone know what you are an expert in? As Seth Godin says, What's your superpower?

The other reason to blog is to be Generous. Giving away your knowledge helps people. Some will buy from you. Many will not but will use your info anyway. So what?