Catalog blogs

Types of Blogs

Say you live in a great pizza town. You could try a slice of every pie in town and write a blog post about each.

Compare! Rate! Criticize! Rave!

Several months and many meals later, you've got a blog. And maybe a following—people are passionate about pizza.

Easy peasy.

I like catalog blogs because they are both simple and, potentially, deep.

They are not just for food, either.

Cathedrals of Europe? Unusual word origins? Flowering garden plants?

It is an adaptable format.

I guarantee that if you did write a blog post for every pizza slice in town, you would learn something about food, about your town, and about blogging.

Maybe you'd learn some things about photography and food writing and the restaurant biz, too.

Stick to Your Theme

I think catalogs work best when the author sticks close to the basic idea.

Resist the temptation to add your thoughts on unrelated topics to your pie blog, at least on a regular basis.

The occasional departure is OK if it adds texture and personality.

Not every post in the blog needs to be a catalog post. You might also write about some of the things you have learned from your blog (about, say, pizza, or toppings, or what beverages go best with what pies).

Some posts might be "meta" posts about posts, for instance "Best Pizza Comments This Month," "Five Favorite New Slices of the Year," etc.

Strengths and Challenges

Unlike a newsy blog, your catalog posts have the same shelf lives as their subjects. Pizza parlors come and go, but cathedrals are here for the long term. 

These posts will be ever green and relevant, and attract readers and interest for years.

Catalog blogs have a hidden strength: readers can enter them at any point (and do, from search engines) and dive right in to your content with no introduction required.

That's actually the best introduction there is.

The challenge is to organize things so that readers can then find the rest of your stuff quickly.

Serve Up Your Content

Labels, index pages and gadgets, and even ratings, can structure and organize a body of posts in helpful ways.

A pizza lover might want to find all the Sicilian pies, the best Margheritas, or all the pizza parlors in their end of town.

My main blog is a catalog blog, with many such bells and whistles. (It's not about about pizza, though, but about apples.)

catalog • civic • journey • tutorial • news aggregator