For the record, I am not in a bad mood. On the contrary, I'm actually feeling pretty good, all be it darn tired. I was traveling on business this past week, and the days were, shall we say, long. They also involved a lot of people contact, which I find personally very tiring (I know, an odd comment for someone who works in HR to make, but so be it...).
Anyway, I love reading other blogs. In fact, if advanced degrees were offered in blog review, I would already have one. I also (obviously) enjoy writing on this blog as well. These two points give me the privilege of being able to comment on blogs and blogging. So here goes.
Blog Things I Like
I like blogs that are written in actual, real English, complete with reasonable punctuation and grammar. I don't think its a big deal for there to be a typo or four; we are talking about blogs here for Pete's sake, not Master's degree term papers written in APA format. I screw stuff up all the time, but at least I make the effort, but that's the point: At least make the effort.
Frequent updates. By my vantage point, if you're not going to update your blog at least monthly, then why have it?
Honest expression. Some of the most engaging blogs I have ever read were expressions of opinion, hope, fear, loss, yearning, disgust, etc.
Clean page layouts.
Blog Things That Loathe
Stealing content from others without attribution. It's happened to me, and quite frankly, it stinks.
Cluttered pages (where you have a tough time finding the actual content). This drives me nuts! I've gone to blogs (some linked on this blog) because I see a headline that looks interesting, only to discover that the actual content is buried somewhere on the page or is undifferentiated from the rest of the page content. Sorry, but from my vantage point, there is about 8 seconds allowed from page landing to the beginning of reading; if I can't find your content within those 8 seconds, well then it's bye-bye.
Blogs that are not optimized for mobile.
Pop-ups and other assorted annoyances.
"Please visit my advertisers" references. Look, I have no problem with someone trying to make a buck off of a blog, but we get it...if you have advertising you actually want people to visit those advertisers. You don't need to telegraph it.
Blog experts. For the record this is about as close as I will ever come to providing "blog expertise", and even then I highly recommend you take whatever the heck I say with about a 10 pound grain of salt. Nothing is more annoying than doing something for the pure enjoyment of it, only to be told by some 28 year old "expert" that somehow you are doing it wrong. Hello! This is the Internet, a magical land were cat videos get a million plus visits; there are no freak'n rules here.
Nickelback (they have nothing to do with blogs and blogging, but I just wanted to mention that I loathe them anyway).
No comments:
Post a Comment