The Best Blog

I have been looking at why, when my time is very short, I am losing interest in some blogs and enews, while others are getting better. I am finding it boils down to narrowly focused content and engaging presentation.

The best blog I know of is my children's. Of all the blogs and enews that I search regarding my professional and personal interests, this is the most engaging and the one that I go to when I only have time for one. Yes, it is because it is my kids, but also because they tell a good story, very briefly, and do it well.

The writer engages the reader with pictures and meaningful details anyone can relate to in their own lives. She is an evangelist in what she's writing about: at the end of it the reader wants to identify with her - to do what she is doing - to be in the place that she is at - to try what she has tried. And she stays very focused on what the blog is about - her's and her family's daily lives. She doesn't waver from that to give a treatise on something or link articles about tangential things, nor does she keep adding new items to the menu that continually dilute the soup and distract from what people came there for in the first place - she doesn't try to be all things to all people.

It seems that more of the industry blogs need to do this same thing. Bruce Clay, Inc. wrote a good piece called "De-blog your blog and increase readers." He says it straight out - it's about the presentation. "Remove all those tacky buttons, nonsensical categories and ugly widgets and make it look like them. There is no blogging commandment that says your blog has to look like a fifth grader's English project. Step away from the pastels and bubble themes. Declare death on the clever Yahoo avatar." And there you have it.

Well, I am interested in your favorite blogs - tell me about them...