Eight of the last ten BetterLesson blog posts have been teacher interviews. “Interview” is a misnomer, though, since the prefix “inter-” implies some kind of dialogue between two parties. These are “surveys,” a one-way conversation between a person and an fixed list of ten questions. (eg. “Coffee, tea, or caffeine free?”)

I’m not even skimming them anymore so let me drop some public encouragement into their suggestion box: if you see someone upload an exceptional lesson, ask the teacher how she did it. Ask her to describe her motivation and creative process. Or, if you see someone using your site exceptionally well – downloading lots of material, leaving comments everywhere, ratcheting her “impact” rating past “high” all the way to “jackhammer” – interview her about that.

I’m pretty sure I’m ripping off Kathy Sierra here but it seems empirically true to me that the point of your company blog should be to make your users more powerful, more enthusiastic, and happier about whatever brought them to your site in the first place. They should walk away from an entry on the BetterLesson blog inspired, excited about their career choice, and eager to reach “jackhammer” status on your site.

If this doesn’t make sense, check out Kickstarter which has – bar none – the best company blog around – killer interviews, tutorials, and podcasts, all of which make you want to sign up and get that hard cider business out of your head and funded on their site.

Nothing but love, BL buddies. Stay strong.