I’d be really grateful if people commenting on this subject on Problogger would take a look at my blog and tell me what they think. I’m really knew at the blogging thing. Am I doing it right? What do you think? Mel Menzies http://www.melmenzies.co.uk

Though we at ZackBrandit have decided to take another approach to create our new widget.
Instead we profile the blog based on the readers’ perception.
This way you can know how other readers view a particular blog based on 8 different criteria such as relevance of information, creativity and way of communicating.
There are in total 16 different profiles each represented by a picture.

This new feature will go into beta end of this year and I invite you to read more about it on or blog at:

http://blog.zackbrandit.com/post/2008/08/20/Zack-The-Blog-Profiler.aspx

This is an example of a profile
http://blog.zackbrandit.com/post/2008/08/29/Blog-Profile-1-e28093-The-Promoter.aspx

Please feel free to leave comments on the blog on how you feel about the idea and how we could improve it, knowing that any user will be able to comment on the profiles and as such better it.

the blogger will also be able to select 1 or more topics he considers as most important to his blog, this way we can combine his vision with the readers view.

To consider a new blog approach, decide the subject of the blog and its purpose, then determine what variables would be common with other successful blogs.

In other words, while like everyone else I categorize blogs at first with a nod to the general content (“he blogs about finance a lot. Alright, it’s a finance blog”), over time that changes markedly if the author opens up and allows his voice to be heard.

This is something that really puzzles me about most blogs: I feel like they’re too generic to merit an audience. All the information I and many others give can be had elsewhere; why should anyone visit a blog? The voice matters, so much so that the initial categorization gets thrown out. Calling one of my favorite blogs, i.e. http://collectionofwords.com/words a photoblog is kinda like calling Muhammad Ali an athlete. It does no justice to what’s going on over a series of entries, or the significance of the person’s actions and accomplishments.

I’m getting into this issue because the way your prompt is framed, the question is “what do you, as a blogger, want to be consistent about?” To me, the whole game is audience engagement – you need to entertain and inform and make sure they’re feeling and actually are rewarded by reading your work. So if consistency in content helps that larger goal, great. But for some blogs, it doesn’t mean anything. And there are personal blogs I’ll always read, despite the vast amount of things that come under “personal,” because there are people I admire and want to keep up with.

Re: your more specific query about writing style, I think posts should be varied within a blog, if this can be done. A how-to post followed by a list post or by an essay or what-not. I mean, think about your readers again. What you’re aiming for are points of entry (i.e. “home-run posts”) that get people interested, and then you want the blog as a whole to have a sense of continuity, not like you just threw up a ton of recipes all at once and instead of a recipe site it was a blog. A blog should take full advantage of the reverse chronological order.

As an Urban Planner I look at blogging as a contemporary tool/technique to further my professional work, using blogs as stakeholder engagement platforms and project frameworks guided by my professional expertise.

The blogs I have developed for municipal work are very carefully designed given the sensitive and important nature of their public service contexts. These blogs go well beyond editorializing or typical municipal blogs which are often unstructured and unfocused in their content and foster communication that is little more than email on steroids.

My blogs are project specific engagement platforms that have significantly changed the way I manage Planning projects. I develop them to inform and empower stakeholders; include accountability measures; integrate action research methods and other Planning tools.

So what category does this kind of blogging fit into? I also co-author Civic Blogger (www.civicblogger.blogspot.com); a site dedicated to promoting and discussing these kinds of issues.

Baby Blogs go to babysphere, politics go to Politicsphere, Make Money are the MMOSphere and so on, so on.

Blogs are blogs but a car is a car and there are different categories for cars.

Personal categorization is good in so far as it helps you to stay focused on your chosen topic. Global categorization comes into play on blog indexes and directories but I’m not so sure that is how most blogs are found. Most are found through search engines, social media or word of mouth.

I’m amazed that so many ‘savvy computer geeks’ (meaning you actually know what a blog is) are so subjective about categorization. Computers, data, information exists only because we can categorization them. The first existence of a blog is its website address – categorization.

I think some bloggers misunderstand what categorization is. When we talk about categorizing a blog we are actually talking about genre. The Arts are the ones that use genre – e.g. film: Sci-fi, Drama, Action, fantasy, etc. This doesn’t mean you can’t have sub-genres and also cross-genres (Star Wars for instance – a western-sci-fi). Genres just group certain attributes together to create a universal understanding.

A universal understanding is what makes us connected. ;)