Question #1
27%
77%
Question #2
133,000,000 blogs
WhatMakesABlog.com
7. Periodic Updates
6. Easy Publishing
5. http://www.Permalinks.com/07/29/social-media-university
4. 

3. Pinging 
2.  
1. It's Personal
7,400,000 blogs
Hosted
Self-Hosted
2004
2008
Who is your audience?
What do you want to convey?
Customer Loyalty
Product Service Education
Lead Generation
Entertainment
Awareness
Thought Leadership
Start Today
Advice
Listen. Comment. Post.
Build Audience
Share Link Love
Break News
Coin a term or two.
Do Email Interviews with the Well-Known.
Encourage digg, del.icio.us, and tweeting of your posts
More Than Words
Be Helpful
Technorati
todd@800ceoread.com
http://prezi.com/133106/
Footnotes:
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/if-i-started-today/ 
 http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/06/how_to_get_traf.html 
http://www.chrisbrogan.com/strategic-blogging-and-some-tactics-to-nail-it/

Books:

Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky
Meatball Sundae by Seth Godin
Say Everything by Scott Rosenberg
Trust Agents by Chris Brogan
Groundswell by Josh Beroff and Charlene Li
What Would Google Do? by Jeff Jarvis