The Blog of Michael Hyatt is a Benchmark for Excellence for Me

I read a variety of blogs.  I appreciate the flexibility of expression and content available with blogs.  The blog I find the best benchmark for excellence as I work to learn more about writing, speaking, creating content, developing my business, generating followers and creating a community, is www.MichaelHyatt.com.

Michael Hyatt

Part of what makes Michael's blog site so valuable to me, and an excellent example of the use of “best practices”, is his background as a publisher gives him a framework for how to effectively communicate his content and how to reference other providers of content.  Each post has a headline that is specific and clear, the posts are easy to read, rich with content, and referenced for me to research additional information.  Michael is blogging about what he is currently learning about in the areas I mentioned above, and is transparent in the content he is sharing.  He is consistent in his goal of providing value to his readers; he talks about things that work and things that don't work.  He is personal and human with his examples and he is easy to relate and feel empathetic with.  His posts use a variety of media to convey his message and effectively make his points.  In addition to the written text of his blogs, he also uses podcasts and videos.

His blog posts are well thought through for content, value, and the development of community.  He asks questions to the blog readers at the end of each post and provides links to additional articles or content that may be of value.  He encourages and provides space for comments beneath each blog post and frequently responds personally.  Michael creates podcasts from the content of his blogs so he can reach an even broader audience.  In his blog posts, he references the podcasts, and in the podcasts he references the blog posts, expanding his body of work with multiple tools, but giving people multiple options for how to get his messages.  For example, I often listen to his podcasts while I'm driving.  In them he references the blog post number so I can easily find exactly what he is talking about in his podcast. 

Another component of his blog that, for me, demonstrates “best practices”, is how he uses the “real estate”, the space, on his blog site.  He organizes his content so it is easy to follow and, while he has different types of content on his blog site, the different types of content are separated in a very logical structure.  The page itself is easy to read, so if my only goal is to read his individual blog postings, they are easy to find on the page, read, or search for.