Some members of the Wikinomics team spoke this morning about what makes a blog effective. Our friend Neil provides a case study in how to create an amazing contribution to the blogosphere. His site 1000awesomethings which launched earlier this year has almost 1 million visits and tons of daily readers.

What makes it so effective? Here are some keys:

1. Fresh content. Neil posts a new “awesome thing” every weekday.

2. Good content. The site is funny and well-written. I’ve never seen a typo. Cool, interesting graphics are always included.

3. Original theme. He talks about regular things that happen to be cool, like playing old school video games, playing on old, dangerous playground equipment, and ordering off the menu at fast food restaurants.

4. Effective use of cross links. He generates traffic and appeals to readers by adding links to other sites with a similar sense of humour like Stuff White People Like, Passive Aggressive Notes, and Girls Eating Sandwiches. Go ahead, click on the last one. It is a collection of regular looking girls eating regular looking sandwiches. And you have no right to complain. Also, he links to Wikinomics, so that’s cool.

5. Effective use of digg. When Neil posted this plaintive plea to digg, his site really took off. Since then, whenever he has a post that he thinks is really good, he asks a dozen or so friends to digg it, which puts the post on the front page.

AWESOME!