Asking what makes a good blog is an almost ridiculous question. There are so many factors that contribute to a good blog that some of those factors, regarded as “rules”, can be thrown out the window. Even such common sense factors as good grammar are merely suggestions for the duration you are on the internet. There is simply no other medium as of today that affords us the same flexibility in forming a narrative.
But the question still remains, “What makes a good blog?”. You could point to easy navigation, to ease of readability, to the highest quality content, or even how incredibly (sometimes ridiculously specific) a blog is, or even to whom the author is. But the reality is that a good blog is the sum of it’s parts.
A good blog is easy to navigate. Brian Carroll points out that a blog being aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate improves the credibility of the blog. (Carroll, 28) This should be a priority of any excellent blog because if the end user cannot get to your content, then no matter the quality of the content, it will never be seen. Humans of New York is an excellent example of fantastic design, with all content being easily and logically placed and the menu taking you, in a single click, to all the necessary aspects of the website.
Ease of readability should also be a concern for a blog, as well as the possibility of “scanability”, designing in such a way that those who are short on attention can scan your blog and still get the gist. In many ways, this is simply using the tools that blogs already have an advantage in (photos, video, large headers) in a way that makes it easy for the end user to consume the content. Rachel McAlpine pushes for a greater scanability on blogs, calling web users, “monsters of impatience.” (Carroll, 31) While this is hyperbolic, it does bring up a point that the web is a fast paced medium and a good blog will generally keep the pace.
Using photos or video can help change the pace of consumption for the end user, either livening up the speed with photos or slowing them down with a video. Both of these can help to combat the “monsters of impatience” idea by simply giving a reader variety, which is just as good as scanability in most cases. Blogs like Engadget and The Verge are both masters of creating an environment where eye catching images and videos change the pace at which the reader moves through an article.
The quality of the content is one of the key factors with any blog. High quality content, be it photos, videos or the writing itself are all center stage. It would be easiest to say that readers come for the design and stay for the content, though that is a generalization. Carroll lists a number of things that contribute to high quality writing (Carroll, 7-13), but it’s easy to disagree with him on any number of them. The LOLcats blog has made a living off of cellphone photos with grammatically incorrect captions and many of the most popular Tumblr blogs are nothing but content “middlemen” for Harry Potter gifs.
One of the things often cited as being key to an excellent blog is simply, your voice. I believe that this is bullshit. Your voice may be slightly different, yes, but there are guaranteed to be thousands of other people who will say almost the same thing. But the keyword here is almost. A good blogger writes about that “almost” because that “almost” is the only thing separating the writer’s voice from millions of others who are writing about the same thing. A good blogger writes about that “almost” in a voice that pleases his audience, sometimes entertaining them, sometimes fascinating them, other times terrifying or horrifying them. The author’s voice is the defining quality of almost every other factor. The design and content should mimic the voice; a children’s photography blogger should not write about her new obsession with horror movies and goth music, just as a blog about minimalism should be rather minimalist in design.
It is the combination of your voice with good writing; good writing with ease of readability and a variety of content; ease of readability with good design. It is the sum of the parts that make a good blog.
Like you I also pointed out that blog site organization is needless to say necessary. It has always annoyed me when I go on a blog site that has a sick layout, but you cannot figure out where anything is. You also brought another valid point about how a lot of bloggers sound the same when it comes to expressing “simply there voice”. Though I believe bloggers should try to be original and avoid sounding like other bloggers, I believe it is easier said then done to do.