Aaron Lerch

Jeff Atwood posted a list of 13 blog clichés. While I appreciate his emphasis on preference over belief, his readership numbers tell a larger story: Jeff Atwood’s preferences trump even my own beliefs. He knows what he’s talking about. But we all knew that already, didn’t we?

I’m going to do you all a favor, though. I’m going to apply my patented “Lerch technique” to sum up Jeff’s entire thoughtful, well-written, fantastic post. Get ready, here it comes. Here’s how you avoid cliché blogging: use common sense.

More and more I am becoming convinced that a mature, well-informed, and empathetic common sense is one of the best guides a person can have.

I suppose the real problem is that much of what Jeff wrote about really isn’t common sense to most people. For those people, maybe the Ethic of Reciprocity (aka The Golden Rule) can help. Blog unto others as you would have them blog unto you.

Really, it comes down to understanding three general things:

1. People always interact with your blog first for content, and then sometimes for “you”. The more “stuff” that gets in the way of that objective, the less likely people are to read, and continue reading.
2. Many people (not all) read in syndication readers - your site layout should be secondary, there to serve those who find you by accident search and those who come to participate in the comments.
3. Google is your best friend. While it is important to tag posts, I find that when I’m trying to locate a post on someone’s site I usually have a general recollection of its content and nothing more. But that’s more than enough for Google. For example, Jeff posted about developers creating UIs, which for me translates into a Google search for “developer ui site:codinghorror.com“. Bam, done. Common sense says, though, that “search plus browse” is the best answer–so tag those posts.

If you forget everything (and you probably already have), remember these three words: use common sense!