Inside HBS is a personal blog maintained by an MBA student at Harvard Business School. In this blog, the author considerably writes about life on campus and in Boston, and a little bit about the MBA program.
What I like about this blog
One thing that you will notice about this blog is that the writing style is consistent with the two functions the blog serves: one, to document the writer?s life as a student at the Harvard Business School; and two, to tell the reader about the sights and the culture in Boston. Unlike most personal blogs in which the writer simply expresses his or her thoughts without the need to explain things to whoever cares enough to read, this one doubles as an informative/travel blog. For instance, in a post about hiking in Blue Hills, the writer tells the readers that it is “the most popular of the Boston-area hiking spots” and that it “may be the biggest of the three major state parks within the I-95 inner Boston loop,” after which he or she embeds a map of Boston parks.
It also contains landscape photos and posts on Boston holidays, as well as the writer?s observation on the attitude of HBS students. The blog layout is a simple two-column, three-page Cutline theme, with links to other HBS blogs. Site navigation is relatively easy, as there are not too many links, and posts are tagged accordingly.
Suggestions for improvement
Although the contents of the blog make for an educational and entertaining read, the layout does little justice to it. Its upbeat tone will work well with “Follow me” or “Tweet this” Twitter widgets or those that encourage more interaction from readers (other than the comment field). The sitemap link displays an error message when clicked, so the link must be broken and needs to be re-configured. Lastly, it will be better if the archive is transferred to the right column, as it is more noticeable there than in a separate page.
