Blogs have been around a little while now and they've gained tremendous popularity. They're a perfect tool for personal journals, where the most recent post appears at the top of the page and readers can see what their friend(s) have been up to in the past few weeks. If you're one of those people (I certainly am) who likes discovering a new personal blog once in a while in order to get a glimpse into a stranger's life and perspective, it's great as well - you come across the blog, read a few of the recent entries, add it to your bookmarks or bloglines, and now you're a regular reader of that person's blog.
Now, when the blog is written for the purpose of being an informational source (like this one, or one on say, fly fishing techniques), the blog model isn't quite perfect for the purpose. The reason for this is that new entries always appear at the top of the page, giving it the most visibility and highest priority. However, on an informational blog, the newest entry is not necessarily the most important, nor necessarily focused on what the blog is supposed to be about. Maybe you write an informational blog on vintage automobile restoration. Your most detailed and informative post could've been written a year and a half ago. However, when a new reader sees your blog, it's very unlikely that he will dig that deep and find that posting. This flaw that I'm pointing out is presupposed by the assumption that people who write informational blogs want it to be broadcasted to as many dutiful readers as possible. When you promote your blog in order to increase readership, the people that land on your blog are most likely going to read only the most recent 3 or 4 postings before making a decision as to whether it is valuable to them and if they should bookmark it or not...which means that the most recent 3 or 4 postings at any given time will determine whether someone lands on your page becomes a loyal reader or not. What can you do about that? Well, I guess you could make sure that your most recent postings are always kickass and dead-on the focus of the blog. Or, you can add something up-front that is always there that gives people a good idea of what your blog is all about.
My approach to this shortcoming is to add a section on the sidebar entitled "My Favorite Posts", where I will link to my posts that I think are the most relevant to this blog's essence. Hope it will be useful. It seems that what Seth Godin occasionally does to highlight his best posts is to list them in a separate post.
Edit (9/23/05) - read more about blog flaws on another of my postings.
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