Home Interior: What makes a Design Blog Interesting?

I have mixed feelings on whether yesterday’s post should ever have been written. There was lots of lively debate in the comments and even a few cranky ones mixed in to the long list I received (I also lost a reader according to her comment). Also, two emails arrived saying “Wow your sisters must be upset about that post”. And here’s the thing, I read it to one because it was mostly about her and she said “sure no problem'” because actually I’m committed that we come to a solution that works for us all (and so is she). My other sister was mentioned (so I didn’t read it to her in advance) and she was cranky, and we worked it out. She is the real writer in our family and she offered to write a post from their point of view, so I agreed. Stay tuned for that one.

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I wrote about ‘decorating for family’ because I know a lot of designers (and anyone who sells time) struggles with maintaining a balance with their family and friends and I honestly didn’t know the best way to handle it. What makes me a good colourist and a designer is that I analyze everything and I do the same thing with relationships. If I wasn’t writing about design, I would write a relationship blog because what makes people tick inside them fascinates me just as much as colour does.

And I also love a lively debate once in a while, I always learn something and I think what makes relationships great is when you work through the issues that push your buttons and get to the other side. And forgive. And forget. And forgetting is hard. We hardly remember the argument that we had but we sure remember how we felt when the event or argument happened.

So what makes a design/or any blog interesting?

As Copyblogger says in this post, The first rule of Copyblogger

1. “Great content comes from craft, care, and attention, not talent.”

Image via This is Glamorous

2. “It comes from obsessively focusing on what your reader wants. What’s bugging her? What problem is she having a hard time solving? What does she want more than anything? What’s she dreaming about? What wakes her up at 3 in the morning? What makes her feel like a beautiful and unique snowflake?”

Since a huge number of my readers are designers, I think that my post attempted to help them (and me) in the family = free conversation. But what about all the rest of my readers who don’t care about that (because it’s not what you do) and had opposite opinions?

Or then there’s the other side of it (this part is for the bloggers reading this), written by Mike Duran; who asked this question:

3. “What kinds of comments are you looking for on your blog? Are you looking for “amens” and “attaboys”? Or are you really looking for dialog?” and then he quoted Copyblogger (like we all do):

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“In the blogging world, buzz mainly finds you in your blog comments. When you hit a hot button, that’s where you first find out. When you look at great blogs, it’s not uncommon to find that the comments become even better than the post itself — so let them.

If you’ve written something that’s whipping up controversy, don’t hide from your comments. Embrace the buzz, both positive and negative. Learn from it. Dive in and chat. Your readers will thank you (and become even more loyal on account of it)”

4. To have a good blog, pretend that your perfect client is on the other side of the desk while you’re writing. Write to her. So when I’m writing posts about money, I’m talking to the designers that attend my workshops. When I talk about “How to have a great blog” I’m talking to other design bloggers. When I talk about design, colour and atmosphere, I’m talking to my future clients, readers that love design in addition to designers and bloggers.

Image via the Beautiful Shelter

I created this blog because I’m passionate about colour and design and because it took me so long to figure it out on my own, if I can, I like to make it easier for everyone else. And sometimes I write ‘about me’ because whenever I read a personal post on a blog that I follow it makes me feel closer to the blogger and it makes her blog more interesting to me.

There was lots of talk in the comments in yesterdays post (almost 100 by the time I’m posting this) analyzing my relationship with my sisters and whether it’s ‘healthy’ or not so let me be clear, for the record. I love my sisters deeply, we are very close and at the same time, we most certainly argue and occasionally hang up on each other, but it generally never lasts long. Is our relationship perfectly healthy? Well that is up for us to decide and for you to analyze, should you care to.