What makes a good blog?

A blog entry must not have just fancy words and nice pictures or graphics to go along with it. It must have substantial information that is relevant to the topic and the picture or visual aid must also be relevant to the topic. When you look at the pictures or visual aids, you should be able to infer what the entry is about. There must be facts and/or statistics that help explain the topic of the post, instead of just random opinions, so that it does not seem that the entry was made randomly. This especially separates the great blogs from the average blogs. Instead of trying to look flashy, it is important that the content is the focal point of your blog. This has been stated by my teacher for my project, so I try to make the content the reason for people to see my blog. For example, this blog entry from Nola.com's real estate blog talks about the growing communities of St. Tammany Parish, particularly in Covington and Mandeville. The entry uses many facts to support its topic, including the number of houses under contract from a realtor company and the number of houses on the market in recent months. The points made are not only supported by these facts, but are the foundation of other points established in the entry. There are a few pictures of scenery that give a feel of some of the properties available in some of the St. Tammany Parish properties. Documentation is also very helpful to the validity of your entry. In this entry, the author uses quotes from interviewing people in the real estate business from various companies.

So, to sum up a good blog entry, you must have good content, the visual aids must be relevant to the topic, and you cannot stray from your topic.

Here's a link to my example blog: http://blog.nola.com/realestate/2009/03/opendoor_policy_covington_mand.html