...is actually quite difficult. I was just checking all of your (English 4040/7040) blogs, and discovered that you either agree, or are just slacking. But I have no internet access at home, so it has to be done today!
First thing first, I had to go and find a blog I liked, and it seemed best to look outside of class for this. (Not that yours aren't great, I just prefer analyzing strangers). After looking and then looking some more, I found myself inclined to agree with Jake: most blogs are dull and boring. Then, just when all hope was lost, I stumbled on The Cleaner Plate Club. Wow.
I don't know who this woman is, but I think I'm falling for her. Just go to her site and hover over the hyperlinks: a little picture pops up! How does she do it? (Seriously, if anyone knows, tell me!)
So the first reason that I've chosen to discuss The Cleaner Plate Club is for the obvious mastery of technology on the site itself. It oozes professionality, but not in a "big-businessy" polished presentation. It's more of a "snarky stay-at-homer puts her brains to good use in more ways that just how to feed the family" sort of presentation. Although now that we're talking about feeding the family, it would be relevant to note that food (particularly for the family) is the primary topic of this blog.
Cleanerplateclub doesn't stop with food. She uses it as her "niche," but lots of other ideas satellite around food in a clever and effective manner. For example, Barak Obama, Ashton Kutcher, and Oscar winners are discussed comfortably alongside the weather, ethical eating, parenting, and beef recalls. Because of this, I feel that cleanerplateclub has created appeal to both a niche audience and to the world at large, and that is difficult to do.
Graphically, the website is very simple. It is virtually monochromatic, with gray, white, and black dominating the arena. The textual content is centered, with large open spaces on each side. This frees up the format for the insert of colorful, informative, and humorous pictures to illustrate points, or recipes. (Which look delicious!)
The style of the posts is deliberately informal. I say deliberately, because there is nothing accidental about this blog. Its author is clearly proofreading her posts and designing her page as she goes along. This is important, because there are many informal blogs out there, and like Jake and I think (hope I'm not presuming here), they can be dull and boring.
Poorly thought out posts with frequent errors don't grab reader attention. This blog grabs it and won't let go. Case in point: I've been trying to type this up for an hour and a half now, but I keep reading the interesting stuff on The Cleaner Plate Club instead.
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4 comments:
You would be right in presuming that I find most blogs dull and boring. However, part of this has to be the "niche" that they're looking to; if I'm not interested in the subject I am not much inclined to give the writing a chance.
Also, the pop-up window feature is standard on wordpress blogs. It would be nice to have it on blogger as a quick widget. Instead you'd have to find out the HTML, which I presume would be sort of difficult.
Still slacking. I paged through many, many, many blogs, and couldn't bring myself to do it yet. Jake's right about wordpress, but the visual interface is bad (for me) over there. In fact, I will go there right now, to analyze a blog.
THANK YOU Anne, for forcing me to work....
:)
So, Raggedy, did you try The Cleaner Plate's writing prompt "My life in six words or so"? I think I'll try it now. Tee-hee...
Yes! I've actually been working on it a lot, but I like all of hers better than anything I come up with...
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