The other day I discussed how not everyone deserves a blog at a newspaper, but I think it’s important to point out what makes a blog worth reading.

1. Focus
A focused blog almost always will be more popular and facilitate richer conversations than an unfocused blog.

Now, you don’t have to have a niche. It just will be a lot more difficult for your blog to gain traction. I would argue, however, that a blog at a professional news organization needs to have a clearly defined purpose and hone in on a niche. Maybe your personal blog has no niche, and that’s okay, but that’s not how professional organizations should operate.

You can, however, get around not having an overly focused blog with good writing and a strong personality.

2. Quality writing
You don’t need to be winning Pulitzers or having people on the edge of their seats like a good novelist, but any good blog should at least have clear and concise writing.

I know I am guilty of being verbose at times, but I do make an effort to strive for brevity.

The Web is filled with millions of blogs. A blog will quickly die if the writing isn’t good. It doesn’t matter how good the insight is or how fascinating a writer is, people won’t stick around for something that is hard to read.

3. Humbleness
You can’t own the conversation. I think a lot of journalists and journalism organizations are used to owning the conversation and owning stories.

That’s not how the Web works. A good blog is always part of the larger conversation. A good blog always links to other blogs and welcomes comments from people and other bloggers. A good blogger isn’t just apart of the conversation because he or she reads and posts about a subject — rather a good blogger also reads other blogs and posts on them.

Mindy McAdams points out the need to be apart of the conversation in a recent post:

One of the most important things for a new blogger to recognize, I think, is that the conversation includes many blogs — not just your own blog. Maybe we should say “Blogs are more like a conversation (than they are like other text-based media)” — but that is rather clumsy.

4. Be a good neighbor
You will find it much easier to establish yourself if you play well with others.

This really means being an active member of the blog community and sharing unique insights. It also means recognizing when fellow bloggers make good posts. This is why having focus is important.

Without a focused blog, there isn’t a community for your blog to be apart of. If your blog is just your random musings about random subjects in the world, you won’t really have anyone to consistently connect with.

This is one of the areas where I feel I need to improve on the most. I need to get out in the online journalism and Web development communities more and post more on others blogs. Being a good community member is recognizing that you need others to contribute to the conversation.

5. Links
This one seems basic but is often neglected.

When you are talking about a topic, subject or an event, link to it. Since you are striving to be apart of a conversation, it’s a good idea to link people to other conversation points. Good links often help flesh out a topic.

It might be linking to other bloggers or it might be linking to news stories. But whatever the topic, it’s always a good idea to give your readers background. Think of links as interactive footnotes.

Your readers don’t have to click them, but they can click them to double check your facts or to learn more about a topic. Good links will help give you authority.

Andrew Olson cautions, however, to be focused with your links:

It’s worth pointing out, though, don’t hit the other extreme of just talking about anything that’s popular, there’s a very distinct difference between this model and link-baiting. You don’t just sell out and talk about how great Mahalo is because you know Jason Calacanis will link to you from his twitter – the key is to be extremely honest in what you do and only discuss the great conversations that you personally have knowledge in and that your audience wants to know about.

And it goes without saying that a good blog is updated regularly. It doesn’t have to be daily, but if people can’t expect semi-regular postings they won’t come back.