Blogger Quicklist - Making a blog "work"

Blogging - and bloggers - have got me thinking about how to make a blog 'work'. I have had several blogs, and although lots of energy, time and effort can ensure some readership it's very difficult to keep a blog going in the long-run.

So, here are a few things that seem important to me:
1. Use a main thread in your blog e.g. write about your work OR write about your private life OR write about a particular passion and anything related OR ... but don't mix them up in the same blog (or only do so rarely, e.g. explain you haven't posted for a week because you have been on holiday, that sort of thing);
2. Don't post just to post, if inspiration gets low, just let it go for a while
3. Choose a good blog title, only use your name if you are already a well-known blogger figure
4. Go crazy with labels, use lots of them
5. Use blogger's label list (and/or turn it into a label cloud)
6. Use the post options to automatically schedule post publication (for instance, it may be easier to write several posts at the week-end and schedule them to be published during the week) - this way users don't get overloaded with new posts to read, and you don't feel obligated to write more during the week.
7. Don't let posts get too lengthy

Well, there must be lots of other obvious guidelines which I didn't mention here. But I guess it's a start! I can't really talk about how to increase blog participation (e.g. comments, emails, etc.) as I have a very low participative rate on this blog. But one of the tricks is to ask questions every time you end a post like so:

What 'guidelines' do you follow to make your blog successful?