I hate the regurgitation thing. The entire commenting on other people's comments about other people's original work is just such a massive circle jerk.

When decided to write my blog I made two rules (which I rarely break): no linking to other blogs just to stroke my ego with an opinion post, no personal experience posts (i.e. today I went to the Taj Mahal and...)

I think some personal experiences are interesting, if they're somewhat unique. People seem to appreciate some of my writing about living in Italy, and even more importantly, I've made some good friends after people have contacted me to say hi and get information. I don't mix that up with the technical/business blog, though, which is on another domain entirely.

In some ways blogging makes the succeed/fail proposition read as "create original and substantive content or fail" (because people will otherwise be able to point to your crappy blog as a sign of general incompetence). And when you get into the habit of thinking up original and substantive ideas, some of your ideas will inevitably be about your main product/job..